Tara Jean Mesyn

Finding synerey as a dual major in the Informatino & Media and the Curriculum, Instruction, & Teacher Education Ph.D. programs at Michigan State University grants doctoral student Tara Jean (T.J.) Mesyn the opportunity to meld her passions into one comprehensive transdisciplinary degree. Her varied work strives to bridge the gap between traditional and creative scholarship, while her teaching seeks to create a humanizing environment for students to grow and push their creativity and perceptions. Her traditional research explores the role of media - specifically visual media - in the context of high school history classrooms, and how that media contributes to shaping students' understanding of the world. Creatively, her international, award-winning, multimedia project American Hurt: Vietnam Veteran Portraits & Perspectives inspired her current research study on investigating US History textbooks and teachers' supplemental media materials through a lens of media and visual literacy. Her current creative scholarship which has also garnered international and academic awards, Clinically [in]Significant, aims to reveal the unseen chaos of chronic invisible illnesses while concurrently working to educate and advocate for the research desperately needed to discover root causes and cures.