Curricular Collaboration: Exploring Strategies for Sustainability in Educational Outreach in Providence, RI

University-based educational outreach programs face various challenges in sustainability from year to year. As student leaders graduate and professors or museum professionals change positions, programs can lose momentum. Similarly, programs designed without clear input from the communities they serve are less likely to succeed. Here we present some of the strategies for sustainability explored by the "Think Like an Archaeologist" program, a collaboration between the Joukowsky Institute and the Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropology at Brown University and the RISD Museum, which has provided archaeological programming for local 6th grade social studies classrooms in Providence since 2010. Recently, we explored modifications to the program which would align it even more with the Common Core State Standards, which Rhode Island adopted in 2013. By slightly tweaking our presentations and activities, we could ensure that we were providing more useful programming for area teachers. We also discuss the integration of the program into the graduate and undergraduate curriculum at Brown in a course called "Community Archaeology in Providence and Beyond." This course not only trained an interdisciplinary group of additional instructors for the outreach program, but also prompted students to think critically about issues in community archaeology more widely.