College of Liberal Arts Announces 2024-25 Recipients of the Aaron and Sylvia Wechter Family Excellence Fund
The College of Liberal Arts at the University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP) is proud to announce the recipients of the Aaron and Sylvia Wechter Family Excellence Fund. Dean Anadeli Bencomo expresses her deepest gratitude for the ongoing support that the Aaron and Sylvia Wechter family offers to the excellent work achieved by faculty and students in the humanities, arts, and social sciences at UTEP.
The Aaron and Sylvia Wechter Family Excellence Fund with the JCFEP supports initiatives that foster cultural enrichment and community engagement within and impacting the El Paso Jewish community. While typically only the top two applicants receive awards each year, the high quality of five proposals submitted for this cycle allowed funding for projects authored by both faculty and students.
Dr. Heather Kaplan (Department of Art)
Dr. Heather Kaplan, Sculpture and Makerspace Practices and Problem Solving in a Jewish Elementary School. Proposal: A research study on the intersections of makerspace curriculum and sculpture for elementary learners at the Cherry Hill School in El Paso, TX. The proposed purchase of materials and the hiring of undergraduate research assistants will not only support the research study but also the education of Jewish children in the areas of art and engineering. It contends that these art and engineering practices promise to last longer than the life of the study and will make lasting impact on the school and the community it serves through the mindsets and dispositions learned in the practices and in a community space that includes teachers, students, researchers and undergraduate research assistants.
Dr. Melissa Melpignano (Department of Theatre and Dance)
Dr. Melissa Melpignano, Choreographing Holocaust Remembrance: The Process for the El Paso Performance What Once Was… Proposal: Funds awarded will support the historical and creative research for the artistic project to be performed for the El Paso Jewish Community at the Plaza Theatre on January 27, 2025, for Holocaust Remembrance Day. The movement-based play revolves around the themes of remembrance, resilience, and hope. Dance scholar Rebecca Rossen, Associate Professor in Performance as Public Practice in the Dept. of Theatre and Dance at UT Austin, and author of the forthcoming Moving Memories: Representations of the Holocaust in Contemporary Dance (OUP) will be a guest speaker for this project.
Julio Barrera Moreno (Department of Creative Writing)
Julio Barrera Moreno, Creation Workshop Based on Archival Material. Proposal: An artistic creation project with the Jewish community of El Paso, to review, catalog and reflect on the personal and collective archives of the community, in a desire to meet and reinterpret the memories that are hidden behind the archives and, from this review, to create new memory devices. Based on the collection and cataloguing of the archive, workshops will be held to understand its forms and creative possibilities in order to generate artistic works, such as poems and essays, photographic series, collages, drawings or audiovisual experiences. The creative experiences will be grouped and catalogued in a foldable booklet, printed and digital, where interested participants can exhibit the results of their process as a compilation of collective and individual memory.
Crystal Najera (Department of Theatre and Dance)
Crystal Najera, Sharing the Benefits of Jewish Somatic Practices. Proposal: A research on Jewish-Somatic literature and practices to include the established method of Moshe Feldenkrais (1904-1984), and the groundbreaking work of Rabbi Diane Elliot, choreographer and dance scholar Cia Sautter, Ohad Naharin of the Israeli Batsheva Dance Company, Annick de Souzenelle. Further sources of Jewish corporeal knowledge are available at the UTEP Library and Special Collections as well as at the Temple Mount Sinai’s library. Based on this research, Crystal Najera will craft a series of 60-minute practical Somatics workshops for the Jewish community of El Paso.
UTEP’s Department of Music. The Department has proposed coordinating a series of performances focusing on Jewish musicians and composers with guest artists. Lectures from scholars across different disciplines will emphasize the relevance of the music created by Jewish artists to world cultures and provide a space for productive dialogue centering on Jewish history.
These projects represent a diverse range of artistic exploration and community engagement and align with UTEP's commitment to fostering creativity, cultural understanding, and community partnerships.
