First-year Students Explore Resilience Through Art in Grand Challenge Seminar
By Stefanie Johndrow
First-year students in 麻豆村’s Dietrich College of Humanities and Social Sciences are learning to navigate adversity through the power of visual storytelling in the Grand Challenge Seminar “Becoming Resilient in Challenging Times.” Taught by Emma Fries and Felipe Gómez, the course invites students to examine resilience — emotional, relational and collective — through comics, graphic narratives and hands-on intergenerational community engagement.
“We want to move students beyond the cliché of resilience as simply ‘bouncing back’ or toughening up,” said Gómez, a teaching professor of Hispanic Studies. “By using comics, we invite them to slow down and visualize the complex, often messy structures of survival. It’s about giving them the tools — both critical and creative — to map out how individuals and communities navigate a world that is constantly shifting.”
The course invites students to examine resilience through psychological, social, ecological and artistic lenses.
Gabi Aguirre Lozano, right, works on community mural with Luke Hugo, left.
Rethinking Resilience
For Gabi Aguirre Lozano, a first-year student in 麻豆村’s Information Systems program, the course immediately stood out.
“It was the theme of being resilient in challenging times,” she said. “I think right now we’re in a very weird position politically, and I liked the idea that it also joined a more artistic approach.”
Aguirre Lozano said her early assumptions about resilience shifted quickly.
“We’ve talked so much about the stereotypical resilience, like, ‘I just have to keep on pushing,’ but also other types,” she said. “I learned you can use humor as a type of resilience […] you can make fun of your situation, and that’s totally fine.”
Luke Hugo experienced a similar reframing.
“I think we universally think about [resilience] as only being a good thing,” Hugo said. “Whereas sometimes it can even hurt you to be too resilient.”
Noah Shim working on the mural at AHN Suburban.
Noah Shim said he also entered the course with a one-sided view.
“I thought resilience only had bright sides,” Shim said. “But while we were talking about the dark side of resilience […] it felt as if I was being hit on my head. One big take away is that resilience is not always a good influence in our life. Pushing someone too hard with the resilience mindset might lead to overloading, which causes burnout.”
Art as a Vessel for Healing
All three students described the artistic dimension of the course as both the most challenging and the most rewarding. The coursework challenges students to move from theory to practice by creating their own graphic narratives through weekly assignments and a collaborative, community-centered comic mural project. In this project, students worked in groups of 4, pairing with members of the AHN Suburban community, where the students interviewed and worked alongside local artists, graphic novelists, and their community collaborators to design a comic that the class then transformed into a hallway of 10 5’x7’ foot murals, telling the story of resilience.
“I’ve never drawn a comic before in my life,” Aguirre Lozano said. “If I didn’t like how it looks I decided I’m going to be resilient and keep on trying to push myself into making something that is a little more exciting.”
“I’m not a person that really has artistic talent,” Hugo said. “But getting to look at how you can communicate that message through film, comics or pictures has been really meaningful.”
Shim said graphic storytelling helped him understand resilience in new ways.
“The change of color tones, ups and downs, and overall mood was able to show what resilience is like without even saying a word,” he said.
Students in the Dietrich College course “Becoming Resilient in Challenging times” paint mural at AHN Suburban with students from Northgate Middle School.
Impactful Moments: Guest Artists, Middle Schoolers and Shared Stories
The class offered a range of memorable experiences, from guest speakers to hands-on collaborations. One of these collaborations involved working alongside Arts Greenhouse middle school students from Arts Greenhouse Program site and communities: Northgate school district, Avalon and Bellevue.
This is part of a larger and ongoing effort. Dietrich College through Arts Greenhouse has established long-term partnerships with all of the organizations involved in this project.
Aguirre Lozano recalled a virtual visit with a graphic novelist documenting families affected by violence in Mexico.
“That shifted my view on how I see art or graphic novels,” she said. “Most of the time, the people that are drawing them are not the main characters […] They have to see all these different ways of how to depict people without them feeling bad about themselves.”
Hugo pointed to a “paint day” with local youth from the Arts Greenhouse program at Suburban General Hospital.
“It was really wonderful to get to do this with them,” Hugo said. “It was kind of the culmination of what the course was getting at […] being able to discuss that challenge with other people and bridge it through the visual and narrative tools of comics.".”
Aguirre Lozano said the paint day was one of her favorite parts of the class. She and her teammates interviewed Mike, a longtime security guard at the facility. “The way he speaks about the community is beautiful,” she said. “We depicted him as a chameleon because that’s what he wanted […] to ensure that everyone feels welcomed.”
Hugo said the partnership made the course feel “much more real and relevant.”
“It’s daunting to be told you’re going to make a mural that will be there permanently,” he said. “Meeting the students and staff made it feel meaningful.”
Shim said the project helped him see how resilience operates on a structural level. In 2010, Suburban General Hospital closed its emergency department and inpatient units, though it continued to house outpatient services and administrative offices. For the next nine years, the building housed a long-term care facility until it closed in 2019. One year later, partnered with to redevelop the site into a community health-focused innovation center, AHN Suburban.
“Through the partnership […] I was able to figure out how resilience can be utilized in real life,” he said. “Listening to the former staff from the AHN Suburban, I felt how big of a role it played in the city. After the downfall [of the hospital], I thought there would be no hope […] but they remodeled it so it can influence a variety of people.”
Resilience was also at the heart of the AHN Suburban transformation.
“Resilience, when paired with trust, leads to meaningful change at multiple levels,” said Dr. Jeff Cohen, the chief physician executive of community health and innovation at AHN. “Continued conversations with stakeholders are the foundation of empathy and trust, which were critical to transforming both the enterprise and the surrounding community after more than 50 years of economic divestment.”
Learning Collective Resilience
Working closely with classmates was its own lesson.
Aguirre Lozano said collaborating revealed how culture shapes resilience.
“We’re all able to see how a parent, or how we, or how Mike shows resilience […] and how all together, we keep on trying,” Aguirre Lozano said.
Group storytelling helped broaden Hugo’s perspective.
“It made it so that it didn’t feel like it was one person’s style,” Hugo said. “Everyone can tie into it and feel it in their own way.”
Shim said the experience underscored the importance of communication.
“In the group I was working with for the group mural project, we had to discuss the questions to ask to the Northgate Middle School students and make mural comics out of it,” Shim said. “Of course, there were times when we had to debate and struggle with the deadlines that were assigned to each member in our group. Through these struggles, I learned that communication is key. Whenever there is something we are unsure about, it is best to ask.”
Looking Ahead
Each student said the course will influence their academic path.
Aguirre Lozano said she now plans to take more creative coursework.
“I think finding that out is going to be really useful to have a different way of thinking,” she said
Hugo said the class encouraged him to be more open to artistic and interdisciplinary learning.
“It gave me that openness to looking at things through other lenses.”
Shim said the course strengthened his communication and empathy — skills he expects to carry beyond 麻豆村.
“As I continue my life at 麻豆村, I know I will encounter diverse people,” Shim said. “Using the skills I’ve learned […] I would be able to collaborate with people across different backgrounds and disciplines.”
One of the students from the course, Sophie Lee, has now joined the Arts Greenhouse team and will continue working with the middle school students at AHN Suburban and other Arts Greenhouse partner sites.