Mars, Matthew M | Public & Applied Humanities

mmars@arizona.edu

Mars, Matthew M

Professor (beginning Fall 2024)

Matt Mars is an interdisciplinary scholar who teaches and writes about community innovation and the influence of market narratives on everyday life and routines. Matt’s research is published in a diverse range of journals that span sociology, marketing, community development, and higher education. Some examples of the journals he has published in include Community Development, Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Journal of Higher Education, Marketing Theory, and Minerva. Matt’s current work explores the influence of visual narratives on the creation and identities of local consumption spaces, whether they be coffee shops, craft breweries, or farmers’ markets. Matt is currently the Co-Editor of Advances in the Study of Entrepreneurship, Innovation and Economic Growth series (Emerald), Associate Editor of Community Development, and a member of the editorial board of Local Development & Society.

Matt has received multiple teaching awards and recognitions including being named Dorrance Scholarship Program Professor of Excellence in Teaching (2017-present), the USDA/APLU Excellence in College and University Teaching Award – Western Region (2020), and the APLU Innovative Teaching Award (2018).

Matt earned his PhD through the Center for the Study of Higher Education at The University of Arizona. He also holds an MEd in Counseling and Human Relations from Northern Arizona University and a BA in Sociology and Anthropology from Utica College of Syracuse University.

Currently Teaching

PAH 200 – Introduction to Applied Humanities

This courses introduces and helps students to practice a set of critical and practical skills developed specifically for understanding and improving the human condition. Over the course of the semester we will: 1) survey the origins and history of the applied humanities, paying particular attention to the intersection of ways of seeing and doing; 2) examine exemplary research-informed and publicly-facing projects for insight into how to theorize and improve life in the community and beyond; and 3) explore tools and techniques for engaging in small and large scale applied humanities endeavors.

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PAH 420 – Innovation and the Human Condition: Learning How to Improve Life in the Community and Beyond

This course will equip students with the skills to use the humanities intellectual and analytical traditions to identify and pursue strategic responses to opportunities for innovation in the human condition. Over the course of the semester, students will draw on a range of humanities-based ways of seeing and doing to: 1) identify opportunities for improving the human condition at the community level and beyond; 2) analyze the cultural, political, and economic conditions that influence such opportunities; 3) design technological, industrial, and socio-cultural innovations that are directly responsive to these opportunities; and 4) develop strategic storylines that effectively convey the merits of these innovations to relevant stakeholders.

We will begin by forming small teams of student innovators. Each team will engage, experience, and internalize the course content through a series of activities and tasks that include: 1) identifying a community-based issue or opportunity that warrants an intervention; 2) analyzing the issue or opportunity through secondary research; 3) formulating an innovative strategy that is data-driven and based in the principles and concepts central to the humanities intellectual and analytical traditions; 4) refining and enhancing said innovative strategy through primary research; and 4) developing and delivering a multi-faceted presentation (visual, oral, written) of the strategy to a panel of experts.

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