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The Creative Labs Center (CLC), one of ENVD’s specialized workshops and studio spaces, has been a hub of activity, hosting thousands of students and countless projects. This summer, however, the CLC welcomed a unique group of residents — a flock of birds.  

With wings crafted from painted cardboard, feathers cut from CNC machines and large beaked masks made from papier-mâché, the birds paraded through the Center for Innovation and Creativity (CINC) and soared over the rolling hills of Chatauqua Park. These bird costumes were the culmination of an immersive art-science program, brought to life by a multidisciplinary team of CU faculty, undergraduate mentors and a group of high-school-aged youth who made the CLC their temporary creative nest this summer.  

Side by Side’s Interspecies Fellowship Program, an initiative funded by a $2 million grant from the National Science Foundation, aims to increase participation and a sense of belonging in STEM for historically marginalized young women and gender expansive youth through immersive art-science learning experiences. The projects, which combine biological observation and research with performance and arts, are focused on shifting the ways participants think about and interact with the natural world. 

“Side by Side looks at disrupting the hierarchical relationship of humans over nature,” Side by Side Executive Director Chelsea Hackett noted. “It's literally putting us side by side.” 

In this case, paid high-school aged fellows were tasked with placing themselves side by side with birds. “When we think about climate change and we think about the shifts that need to happen for us to have a more sustainable relationship with the wider environment, birds are very acceptable,” Hackett explained. “They're everywhere. Migratory birds tell us very quickly about the changes in our environment.” 

CU faculty, including ENVD Associate Professor Shawhin Roudbari, Professor Beth Osnes from the Department of Theater and Dance and Professor Rebecca Safran from the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, provided support throughout much of the program. Safran’s lab, which studies barn swallow behavior, specifically helped the group to focus on the co-evolution of humans and barn swallows.  

“Barn swallows are the only birds that exclusively nest on human-made structures, which I thought was super interesting to relate to architecture,” Maya Handelman, ENVD ‘25, noted. Handelman, along with six other undergraduate students, supported the young participants as near-peer mentors throughout the summer. “We were in the CINC for a portion of each day, and I got to show a lot of students about some steps of the design process,” Handelman said. 

The design process included laser cutting feathers out of recycled yard signs, constructing giant papier-mâché bird masks resembling a species of the fellows’ choice, visiting a thrift store to gather clothing and materials and designing the interior and exterior of small birdhouses. While Side by Side has piloted this program in the past, this summer was the first year that it included members of the ENVD community and, as a result, the first year that it became such a materials-focused project. 

"We got to see how they repurpose a ton of materials. The students are so creative, they all have such a sense of style,” Handelman remembers. “Letting students have creative freedom also lets them have more ownership over the project and they get to feel a lot of internal pride as well, which was super important.” 

Integral to Side by Side is the concept of centering youth as knowledge holders, a practice that Handelman and Hackett note is often overlooked in traditional educational models. The initiative also seeks to integrate biological observation with artistic themes by encouraging fellows to value all their senses and explore joy and creativity, rather than focusing solely on data collection. 

“I think particularly within academic institutions, there has been a history of overvaluing quantitative information,” Hackett explained. “The goal of this project is not to say the data and the information isn't important — because it is, and it deeply informs the work that we're doing. But it's really like, how do we take Becca and her lab's deep understanding they've built of the history of barn swallows through a biological lens and use that to think about our own shared relationship with birds and our own shared vision of the future?” 

From Handelman’s personal experience, engaging in science through hands-on learning is what ultimately led her to pursue environmental design. She hopes that through this project, she can provide positive art-science experiences for her mentees, especially at a critical point in their lives. “ENVD is really the overlap of arts and science,” she said. “I'm so used to thinking in that way and I think it’s such a useful skill to have.”  

Hackett agrees. She views the mentorship between the undergrads like Handelman and the young fellows as key to helping them develop and harness these skills. “We've seen that there's something really powerful about near peer mentorship,” she explained. “Our undergrads working with our high schoolers is really, really effective at expanding their understanding of what type of STEM fields or beyond STEM fields they could do climate work in.”