Professor Bloom Wins Awards for Mentoring and Research

Professor Bloom Wins Awards for Mentoring and Research

This spring brings news that Professor Gina Bloom is the recipient of a Chancellor's Award for Mentoring Undergraduate Research, a New Research Initiatives and Interdisciplinary Research grant from the Committee on Research, and a Davis Humanities Institute Network-Collaboration Fellowship for her research. 

 

 

Bloom’s mentoring of undergraduate researchers, particularly centered on the mixed-reality Shakespeare videogame Play the Knave, is deserving of the recognition that comes with the Chancellor's Award for Mentoring Undergraduate Research. 

 

 

This annual award was instituted in 1994 as a way to emphasize the importance and visibility of faculty contributions to the excellence in mentoring and advocacy for undergraduate research. The award will be given out at a virtual Undergraduate Research Center Spring Awards Ceremony on June 2.

 

 

The New Research Initiatives and Interdisciplinary Research grant supports a new research project that will have Professor Bloom collaborating with a theater artist, teachers, and administrators in the Western Cape region of South Africa to explore the impact of Play the Knave in South African high schools.

 

The DHI Network-Collaboration Fellowship recognizes the wide impact of Bloom’s work, as she (frequently alongside her student mentees) brings Play the Knave into schools around California, the nation, and the world. 

 

 

Teachers in those schools testify to the value the game brings to the classroom, explaining that it helps change students’ sense of “what characters in Shakespeare should look like” and promotes an extraordinary degree of engagement. 

 

 

Please join us in congratulating Professor Bloom!