Library

ESTHER DAVID

English and Secondary Education (duel major), Class of 2023

Hometown: Meridian, Idaho

The past year as a University of Idaho Vandal has been rich with personal growth. I've experienced and accomplished so much, such as serving as the 2023 Berry International Jazz Collections Fellow, working as a student-teacher at Moscow Middle School and performing in the Vandal Marching Band, the musical "Cabaret" and the Border Highlanders bagpipe-and-drum band. Along the way, I learned a lot about myself, met many new friends and gained experiences that I never dreamed of having before.

Education at U of I helped me become a tutor for the writing center, an Argonaut student newspaper reporter, resident assistant, co-leader for the Creative Writing Circle and member of Dancers Drummers Dreamers and Jazz Choirs I and II. It has been amazing to interact with so many people, from our great library staff to our musicians and theater department personnel.

Now that I have graduated, I am taking a gap year before starting graduate school. Currently, I’m traveling with my family on a six-month visit to Malaysia, where I plan to teach music or English while reducing barriers to education. Further into the future, my goal is to teach in secondary schools and eventually at the university level. I am passionate about education and hope to bring awareness about neurodivergent experiences to this field.

Through the Berry IJC Fellowship, I collaborated with faculty at the University of Idaho Library Special Collections, the Center for Digital Inquiry and Learning, and the Lionel Hampton School of Music, researching afro-indigenous musician Doc Cheatham's place in jazz history as I learned so much about curation, inquiry and digitization of artifacts. This experience sparked my interest in research and in making specialized knowledge more accessible to others. Thanks to the fellowship, I'm committed to future research and publication in the field of education. Without this scholarship, I'd never have found this spark or been able to share awareness of jazz history and research with many participants of the Lionel Hampton Jazz Festival.

The community at U of I is welcoming, supportive and eager to present new opportunities. I've made great professional connections and life-long friends, and garnered deep knowledge. I would sum up my experience as a Vandal as ambitious and expansive.

Your involvement brings hard-to-find knowledge to new and wider audiences.

To all donors, thank you for your support of research and the arts! Your involvement brings hard-to-find knowledge to new and wider audiences. After presenting my work, many others shared how inspired they were. This experience happened because of your gift.

CONTRIBUTE TO THE LARGEST LIBRARY IN IDAHO

Since 1892, the University of Idaho Library has grown from a single classroom located in the University Administration Building to become the largest library in the state of Idaho, providing access to millions of resources and materials for U of I students, faculty, alumni and Idaho citizens. In addition to housing more than a million books, nearly 10,000 print and online periodical subscriptions, and continuing to serve as an official regional depository of U.S. federal government publications – making almost two million government documents available to the public – our Special Collections and Archives provides access to unique historical photographs, archival maps, rare books and International Jazz Collections.

Our growing Digital Initiatives department makes many of these and other unique resources freely available worldwide via online digital collections.

We could not provide such broad services and access to our resources without help from our donors. Donors help us develop our collections, fund our programs, build our departments and furnish our study areas. Please consider a gift to University of Idaho Library today to ensure access to an always-growing hub of information and special collections for generations to come.