Communication Service Learning Course Earns Award in Historical Research

Communication students after presenting their project to the City of Fayetteville Long Range Planners.

​The fall 2022 Communication Service Learning course titled Environmental and Community Adaptations, taught by Carrie Nelms, allowed students to collaborate with the City of Fayetteville Long Range Planners to document the history of the Hispanic and Latino communities in the Washington County area before 1990. In their preliminary findings, most of the history for the Hispanic and Latino’s communities were undocumented in Arkansas. One student deemed this population the “silent voice” for which they were working to find ways their culture could “be heard.”

In their semester project, these students collected information from festivals, local churches, research in the Washington County and federal archives, phone directories, special collection letters, personal contacts, a public service announcement on La Zeta 95.7 radio station, developed social media campaigns and conducted oral history interviews, which allowed them to obtain Hispanic and Latino history in Northwest Arkansas. As a result of these findings, these students were able to provide proof of numerous prominent Hispanic and Latino families that lived in Fayetteville and the surrounding area before 1990 — including the first Hispanic American female orthodontist and many entrepreneurs.

Their project provided a lens to view a population that silently existed in their space and laid a foundation to be built upon for years to come in documenting the Hispanic and Latino “voice” in this community. The means of these students’ research has provided the Hispanic and Latino population a rightful place in the Fayetteville archives. 

The fall 2022 Communication Environmental and Community Adaptations course was recently selected for the Historical Research Award by the Fayetteville Historic District Commission and will be awarded on June 8 at the City of Fayetteville Historic Preservation Awards ceremony. Congratulations to these communication students for their work and efforts in providing the Hispanic and Latino communities “a voice” to be heard in moving this planning process forward in Northwest Arkansas.

This story also appeared in the University of Arkansas News publication.