StoryCenter Board Spotlight: An Interview with Walt Jacobs

Editor’s Note: This week, as we kick off our annual giving campaign, we’re pleased to feature StoryCenter staff and board member Andrea Spagat’s short interview with fellow board member Walt Jacobs, Dean of the College of Social Sciences at San Jose state University. We’re spotlighting social justice themes, in the campaign, and Walt has long been a champion for the role that digital storytelling can play, in and outside of the classroom, in supporting equity, learning, and action.

Andrea: Can you share with our readers how you were originally introduced to digital storytelling?

Walt: In early spring of 2008, I took a class on making short films. Halfway through the class, the instructor noted that my interests were more in line with digital storytelling than with traditional film making and suggested that I check out the Center for Digital Storytelling, as StoryCenter was then known. I explored the website, and decided to take a three-day workshop as a 40th birthday present to myself. That’s when I met you and Joe! [Joe Lambert, StoryCenter’s Executive Director.] I loved it from day one, and produced a digital story called “Letter to My Mother,” which thanked my mother for watching over me ever since she passed away just before my 10th birthday. Two years later I took a five-day intensive facilitator workshop, and a few years after that completed a one-day iPhone/iPad workshop. You and Joe were also the facilitators in the five-day intensive facilitator workshop, which was a wonderful experience. The one-day iPhone/iPad workshop also rocked!

Andrea: How have you integrated digital storytelling methods into your academic work?

Walt: When I took the three-day workshop in May of 2008, I was a department chair at the University of Minnesota. After returning to Minneapolis, I contacted the instructor of the short film class, who was a graduate student at the University of Minnesota. I said that we should co-teach a class on digital storytelling ASAP, and as a department chair, I could easily put it on the schedule. She agreed, and that fall we taught “Digital Storytelling in and with Communities of Color.” Along with another graduate student who was a student in the class, in 2010 we published an article about our experiences, “The Pedagogy of Digital Storytelling in the College Classroom.” In the spring of 2011, I co-taught the class again, but this time with a student who had been an undergraduate student in the 2008 class. She and I recently co-published an article about our experiences in the two classes, and beyond, “Learning and Teaching Digital Storytelling: A Student’s Journey into “Bravery Spaces.”

 Andrea: What led you to come on as a member of our board?

Walt: In 2012, Joe interviewed me and three others for the “Digital Storytelling in Higher Education” chapter in the 4th edition of his book, Digital Storytelling: Capturing Lives, Creating Community. The following year, 2013, I became a college dean, and the president of the university encouraged senior administrators to join boards of directors. I called Joe and volunteered my services to StoryCenter, since I was passionate about its work ever since my first exposure five years earlier, but he politely declined since I lived 1,800 miles away, and would rarely be able to attend meetings. In the summer of 2015, I moved to San José. I again contacted Joe, and reminded him that I was ready to join the board of directors, and this time he could not say no since I was just an hour away. In January of 2016 I moved even closer—to Oakland, which is next door to Berkeley.

Andrea: In the current political era, how do you see StoryCenter playing a role in championing stories of social justice?

Walt: StoryCenter has a crucial role to play in an era of heightened fear and paranoia. Exposure to real people’s real stories of social justice reminds us of the important voices that are increasingly being silenced as governments around the world pander to the most conservative aspects of society. Personal stories tell us that there are alternatives to a zero-sum analysis that divides the world into winner and losers. Additionally, StoryCenter’s community-based work fosters collective action by physically bringing together diverse casts of people to share stories and learn from each other.

Andrea: Anything else you'd like to add?

Walt: Two things. First, you should organize a reunion of my intensive facilitator workshop class, Andrea. Many of us are now Facebook friends. That’s nice, but an in-person gathering would be amazing. Second, for those readers who don’t know it, in the spring of 2018 StoryCenter will celebrate its 25th anniversary. I look forward to StoryCenter’s next 25 years!