Program Director: Dr. Alan LeBaron
The Maya Heritage Community Project is an interdisciplinary “engaged university” program that works in partnership with Maya organizations and people of Maya heritage throughout the United States. Students and faculty involved in the Maya Project have come from diverse parts of the campus, such as Nursing, Education, Political Science, History, Human Services, Languages, Communications, International Affairs, and American Studies. The Maya Project has received national recognition as a model of “integrative and interdisciplinary programs that emphasize civic engagement.”1
Methodologies relevant to the Maya Project include Service Learning, Participatory Action Research, Participatory Community-Based Research, Applied Anthropology, and Boyer’s Model of Scholarship: but the Maya Project most importantly emphasizes relations with Maya partners based on equality and interconnected leadership. Of great benefit has been a twelve-year partnership with Pastoral Maya, a national Maya self-help organization.2
The Maya Project became a Paul. D. Coverdell Fellows program in 2007; for a Peace Corps report see: Kennesaw Peace Corps Fellows Support Maya Immigrants.
1. “The Influence of Integrative and Interdisciplinary Learning on Civic Engagement” by Nance Lucas, in Civic Engagement in Higher Education by Barbara Jacoby and Associates, Published by Jossey Bass, 2009, pp105-106.
2. Our partnership is discussed in “Pastoral Maya and the Maya Project: Building Maya Civil Society in the U.S” by David Lopez and Alan LeBaron. Practicing Anthropology Vol. 34, No. 1, Winter 2012.