Projects and presentations are no longer for class members’ eyes only. Five students in a women’s studies class are proving this by taking their project a little further.

Women’s Studies 201 students Stacey Goodman, sophomore in pre-business; Amanda Wolf, freshman in biology; Mike Banasiak, senior in management; Kim Dixon, freshman in elementary education; and Kate Rydberg, sophomore in pre-business, have teamed up to create “An Evening in the Arts,” a night of poetry, singing and dancing at the Maintenance Shop of the Memorial Union.

Each semester, students in the course complete an “outrageous act” project.

Julie Snyder-Yuly, one of the teaching assistants for the course, says the students get into groups of five or six and come up with an act or a project they want to do. The projects are supposed to promote awareness of women’s issues.

“The outrageous act for this particular group is organizing [“An Evening in the Arts”] and trying to bring attention to women in the arts,” Snyder-Yuly says. “[The students are] focusing on things that are traditionally thought of as ‘women outlets’ for communication.”

Snyder-Yuly introduced the outrageous act project to her class around the middle of February.

She says within a week, the groups had already begun working on their projects.

This particular group of five agreed upon a project emphasizing women in arts.

Reaching out to various clubs around campus, the group has successfully planned a night focusing on performing arts. The students in this group will be coordinating the event instead of performing in it.

“We are having people coming in to display art, poetry, music and dance,” Banasiak says. “I believe we are getting some design students for the art, and we are looking into several dance clubs for the dance.”

Banasiak says there is also one student who will be doing the musical performance and one doing a poetry reading.

The performance will take place at 7:30 p.m. Thursday in the M-Shop.

There will be a total of four or five performances of poetry, dance and singing.

There is no charge for the event, but the group is hoping to receive donations to give to a local child lab. Rydberg says art supplies or a few dollars would be a great donation.

The idea of showcasing performing arts did not come immediately to the group. Rydberg says the group was headed in another direction.

“Originally we thought about doing a concert, but then we just came up with the basic idea that we should do something that focused on women in general,” Rydberg says.

“There are lots of different women in many different forms of art. We thought, ‘Why not take a bunch of different groups on campus and let them be featured in ‘An Evening?'”