Newsroom

Recently I had the honor of participating in a panel during the 3rd annual TerrapinSTRONG symposium here at the University of Maryland. The topic of this year’s symposium was Navigating Change: Turning Disruption into Direction, and the panel I participated in was titled Building Capacity: Supporting Ourselves & Others through Change. While preparing for that panel, I realized I have a lot to share about this topic — more than we had time to discuss during the symposium!

Over the course of this year, we’ve highlighted a few stories centered around the work of Christina Hnatov, the Academy’s Curriculum and Experience Designer.

At The Academy, we love seeing students take their learning beyond The Loft and into the real world. That’s exactly what Xinyi Zhang did when she transformed a personal conversation into an impactful, multicultural board game called Sea My Culture.

In a digital age where interactions often feel fleeting, how do we truly connect with ourselves and others in more intentional ways? IDEA360: 500 Friends but No One to Play With is a new course we’re offering this spring, that explores this question and more. It’s designed to help students reimagine their relationships by exploring how play and experimentation can transform the way we engage with the world.

This past January, Christina Hnatov, Academy Experience and Curriculum Designer, and TLS Alum and friend of the Academy, Gerald Suarez, embarked on a two-week experiential learning adventure through Barcelona and Madrid, Spain. Their mission?