Off Campus Partners

Through the Paul Peck Humanities Institute (PPHI) at Montgomery College (MC), students have a unique tiered opportunity to gain hands-on experience in storytelling and multimedia communication. In the Digital Storytelling Internship at MC, Level One interns engage deeply with the digital storytelling process to learn the relevant skills and practices of StoryCenter’s model. They create their own digital stories, and support MC faculty and students in class-based storytelling projects. In Level Two, MC interns engage in collaborative projects with institutional and organizational partners to gain valuable experiences and expand their networks. UMBC is a key partner. Each semester, two to five UMBC faculty/staff members from across the disciplines host a Level 2 MC storytelling intern to lead and support storytelling projects in their classes and programs. This high impact experience provides a dynamic platform for interns to enhance their leadership and storytelling skills, explore UMBC as a supportive transfer institution, contribute to the student learning experiences of participating UMBC classes, and engage in a vibrant inter-institutional storytelling community. In Level 3, MC interns who transfer to UMBC have the opportunity to serve as a Peer Mentor and support a faculty member’s class storytelling project and/or to serve as an intern for the Public Stories Lab. In the six years of our collaboration, inter-institutional storytelling teams have presented together (e.g., conferences, webinars, K-12 settings), co-taught workshops, and even contributed to a paper with Dr. Karen Chen (IS). More recently, digital storytelling interns and data science students from MC joined together under Dr. Chen’s NSF grant to create “digital data stories” based on the research of individual scientists at UMBC (e.g. collaborating with NSF HDR Institute iHARP on climate science-themed stories).

UMBC and the Public Stories Lab collaborate with Story Center for nearly two decades since Story Center (then The Center for Digital Storytelling) came to UMBC to lead Digital Storytelling Workshops in 2008. StoryCenter has worked with nearly a thousand organizations around the world and trained more than fifteen thousand people in hundreds of workshops to share stories from their lives. Through their wide-ranging work, they have transformed the way that community activists, educators, health and human services agencies, business professionals, and artists think about the power of personal voice, in creating change.

UMBC and the Public Stories Lab collaborates with the International Digital Storytelling community which hosts international digital storytelling conferences periodically. The 2023 conference was hosted collaboratively by UMBC,  Montgomery College, the Smithsonian Center for Learning & Digital Access, and StoryCenter. Click the link above for upcoming conference information.

Loughborough University (England) and UMBC signed an inter-institutional partnership agreement in 2024 through our Center for Global Education. The robust collaboration between our strong storytelling communities, however, predates this agreement. With other national and global colleagues, faculty/staff from both institutions serve together on the planning committee for the International Digital Storytelling Conference. Our team visited the Storytelling Academy at  Loughborough University when they hosted the conference in 2022, and in return, their team visited us here at UMBC when we co- hosted the conference in 2023. Along the way, we have engaged in a wide variety of collaborative activities, including opportunities for exchange; in-person and virtual talks, shared virtual presentations; special projects (e.g., CS3 podcast, COIL pilot, publication); and the Global Storytelling Reading Group for interested doctoral students, as well as university faculty and staff. Several of these activities also include our partners at Montgomery College, the Smithsonian Center for Learning & Digital Access, and StoryCenter. Most recently, our Loughborough University colleague, Professor Michael Wilson, has been named the UNESCO chair of Storytelling Education for Sustainability. We look forward to new opportunities this post will bring for collaboration on issues of global importance.