“A lot of the things we are learning to do is something that’s going to help us in our professional career,” said Kevin Marheine, a professional writing senior and student in Smith’s class. “We’re not just memorizing a term or an equation or learning how to do a certain type of math function, we’re actually learning and practicing things that we’re going to do in our professional career.”

This semester, the main project students have been working on is putting together an event, The Poetry of Jazz, which will take place at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday at Metrospace, 110 Charles St.

To begin this project, students teamed up with accomplished artists in the area who are experienced in organizing and nourishing local art scenes.

“It’s more or less an apprenticeship experience,” said Smith. “(My students) are the next generation of leaders.”

Marheine said being able to go out into the community to work with other members rather than spending all his time on campus in a classroom has made him a more involved and aware citizen.

“It’s helped me as a writer and as a student and as a community member because I get to see these different things in the community that I wasn’t necessarily aware of before this project,” he said.

After meeting with their mentors, students started planning the event, which will combine two art forms — poetry and jazz music — into one.

“I’m really interested in how different art forms can interweave and interpenetrate one another,” said Ruelaine Stokes, who is the coordinator of the Old Town Poetry Series and also the organizer of Tuesday’s event. “Poetry is and should be like music. When poetry is working well, it has a musical aspect, and that’s one of the things that could make it work with music.”

The night will consist of readings by a variety of spoken word artists, including several MSU students, as well as jazz music performed by jazz studies students.

Smith’s students were responsible for every aspect of the show, from designing posters and recruiting performers to connecting with venue owners and setting up the performance space.

Free from the restraints of a typical classroom setting, Marheine, who will act as the master of ceremonies at Tuesday’s show and also was involved with organizing and publicizing it, said he was able to express more of his creativity when planning it.

“With planning the poetry event it was a little more abstract,” he said. “There weren’t as many hard requirement definitions. It was one of those things were it could be what we made it, which was hard at first.”

Stokes said by being so actively involved with the creation of this event, Smith’s students were taught a lesson in art they could not receive in a classroom.

“The best way to learn how to make art is to watch people making it and to be involved,” she said. “To love art, to learn about art, to make art in any form — written, musical art or dance — you just need to experience it.”

Jazz studies junior Cory Allen, who will perform at Tuesday’s event, said he never has performed in a show that combined music and poetry and did not want to pass up the unique opportunity.

“I figured it’d be a good way to play to a different crowd and work with some artists of different styles,” he said.

Allen said he hopes to bring attention to the logical combination of poetry and jazz with his performance and turn people on to jazz music.

“I hope it helps people to draw connections or lines between the two art forms,” he said. “These kind of creative things, sometimes they’re more related than they seem.”

By connecting MSU students, such as Marheine and Allen, with artistic professionals in the Lansing area, Smith said she hopes to form a stronger bond between the two groups of people.

“What (Stokes) and I are trying to do is to pull those two communities together, which isn’t so easy because it’s hard to get students to get out of East Lansing and go down (to Lansing),” she said. “That’s part of the purpose of these events — to pull these two places together.”