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Owens Selected for National Voter Art Project, Hosts Voter Registration Event

Owens students were invited to a pair of voter education and registration events on Tuesday in College Hall.

An Owens students use spray chalk paint to stencil a dove during the Project HOPE public art project.

Owens vice president of Enrollment Management and Student Affairs Blake Renner (right) and James Zeller, coordinator in Student Life, served nearly 300 pancakes during the Cakes with Blake event.

 

 

Owens Community College was one of 15 college campuses nationwide selected for Project HOPE, a public art installation tied to National Voter Registration Day. The college marked the occasion Tuesday with the project and the third annual Cakes with Blake pancake breakfast in College Hall.

A $1,000 National Voter Registration Day Community College Grant supported both events.

Project HOPE, created by Los Angeles-based street artist and muralist Corie Mattie, aimed to generate community participation. A 36-inch by 77-inch spray chalk stencil of the phrase “Joy as a Verb” was put on the ground outside of College Hall, and students, faculty and staff were invited to use dove stencils to decorate around the words. More than 20 doves were chalked at Owens.

Owens students, faculty and staff were invited to use spray chalk paint to stencil doves around the words “Joy as a Verb” during the Project HOPE public art project.

“Our students aren’t just here for academics,” Owens director of Campus and Community Connections, Krista Kiessling, said. Her department leads the voter engagement activities on campus. “They’re here to build other skills, like how to be a good citizen, a good employee and a good community member. If we get them involved in the voting process and we need to feed them to make that happen, then that’s a win.

“The mural project was an added benefit, another layer of engagement and something that will live on campus for a short while.”

Last year, Owens was recognized as a Voter Friendly Campus by the Fair Election Center’s Campus Vote Project and the NASPA – Student Affairs Administrators in Higher Education. Since 2023, Owens has had a Voter Engagement Team, consisting of faculty and staff that discusses strategies for increasing voter engagement on campus and voter education. The League of Women’s Voters also hosts multiple voter education and registration events on campus throughout the year.

Project HOPE was formed in partnership with National Voter Registration Day with support from the Levi Strauss Foundation.

Community colleges are at the center of Project HOPE for a reason. In the 2020 presidential election, the national voting rate among community college students was nearly 10 percentage points lower than the rate among students at four-year universities.

Closing that gap is a key pillar of Levi Strauss & Co.’s Community College Commitment, which works to increase nonpartisan voter participation among community college students.

“Hope does not appear on its own. It has to be made visible. In a time when it’s easy to feel disconnected from one another, I wanted to create an artwork that could only exist through participation,” Mattie said in a release. “Project HOPE starts with a phrase, but it’s completed by the people who show up. I want each person to leave with the reminder that even small actions can help shape the future of a community.”

For Kiessling, the end result was “exactly what I hoped it would be.”

“We have a ton of doves out there,” she added. “I think the artist will be pleased with what we put forth. I’m excited to see the other 15 colleges.”

For the fourth time in three years, Owens vice president of Enrollment Management and Student Affairs, Dr. Blake Renner, cooked pancakes for the campus community inside the College Hall atrium. For Renner, the event is a refreshing opportunity to interact with students.

“In my role, oftentimes I don’t get a lot of one-on-one interactions with our students. What I do is at a macro level instead of a micro level, so any opportunity we get to work with students is a great reminder of what we do here and why it’s so meaningful,” Renner said. “Giving someone a little bit of food, and getting to smile and laugh with them at work, is a really great day.

“I’m grateful we can collaborate on multiple initiatives to bring awareness to voting. Feeding students and having positive interactions with them is a great day.”

This year, Renner estimated he cooked around 300 pancakes during the event.