Higher Education News
Higher Education Division
by Jean Detlefsen (UNL), Higher Education Representative
Nebraska’s Universities and Colleges work daily to promote the NATA mission statement by providing, “professional support systems with opportunities for growth and development”. Historically, our colleges and universities have provided homes for fall and spring state art conferences, for workshops focused on the arts, and have continued to prepare our next generation of art educators.
My hope is to connect with all of the colleges in Nebraska to build an active group of art educators in higher education, who will work together to continue supporting programs of promise and individuals who will become the next generation of NATA leadership. In this time of budget constraints and multiple K-16 educational agendas it becomes increasingly important for us to not only have local and regional voice but to work together to promote arts education across the state.
To that end I need your help. I need current contact information for the individual(s) who is/are responsible for art education at your higher education institutions. Our records seem to be incomplete and/or out of date. In the spring, we hope to meet in conjunction to a pre-service art educators meeting in Kearney. I will contact you as plans progress. Please send your contact information to: jdetlefs@unlserve.unl.edu.
What’s happening in NATA Higher Education?
Our days are filled with advising, developing courses, teaching, supervising, accreditation, working within our communities, writing, collaborating, organizing workshops, coordinating with K-12 programs, creating, exhibiting and attending to undergraduate, graduate, and doctoral degree programs. The following reports are offered from the few institutions who offered information. This is intended to be an example of dialogue and potential information that can be shared online and through newsletters. I hope that all of Nebraska programs of Art Education at Higher Education Institutions will contribute to future publications.
University of Nebraska Lincoln, University of Nebraska at Kearney, and Wayne State College, all schools that house art education departments, are all in the process of their scheduled accreditation through the Nebraska Department of Education, NCATE, and/or INTASAC standards. Are there other institutions that are in process at this time?
Donna Alden, at UNK, reports that their online MAEd program is growing, having increased to eighty accepted students from thirteen in 2007. They are adding new online courses, including ways to offer studio courses. Lori Santos has developed the following online course for the spring and summer of 2011: Intercultural Aesthetics and Pedagogical Practice, and Art of the Americas: Native American and Latino Art and Artists Women in Art.
Contact Margaret Macintyre Latta at UNL for arts related graduate programs. It is possible to access additional information on the UNL website for master or doctoral degrees. Courses to look for in the fall of 2012 are TEAC 944A Curriculum as Aesthetic Text and TEAC 421/831 J Studies in the Foundations of Education: The Arts of Teaching. Both of these courses are taught by Dr. Margaret Macintyre Latta. For the summer of 2011 look for 890 The Art Studio: A Sequence of Learning. This is a week’s workshop in studio beginning July 15, 2011 taught by Dr. Jean Detlefsen.
Remember to check all of Nebraska College and Universities for opportunities for professional growth and degree programs. What is happening in your college? Can these programs and/or course offerings benefit our NATA members?
Look for presentations from Nebraska Higher Education Faculty at AERA and NAEA; a few of the names that you will encounter are Margaret Mcintyre Latta, Stephanie Baer, Lori J. Santos, Pearl Hansen, Jean Detlefsen, and many more. I look forward to hearing from others of you who are giving presentations at these two conferences and beyond. Readers may find out more information online.
Pearl Hansen writes “We are revamping WSC education offerings and sequencing” which is resulting in art methods courses moving to a required 3 credit hours in contrast to a previous 2 credits.
Carole Meyer reports of working with her CCC community by coordinating her visual design class with the entrepreneurship workshop which gives design students experience working with clients, understanding contracts, and setting priorities.
Publications
"International Journal of Education & the Arts", co-edited by Margaret Macintyre Latta, University of Nebraska-Lincoln & Christine M. Thompson, The Pennsylvania State University. See http://www.ijea.org/. The "International Journal of Education & the Arts" currently serves as an open access platform for scholarly dialogue. Latta and Thompson’s commitment is to the highest forms of scholarship invested in the significances of the arts in education and the education within the arts. As editors, their personal goal is to create a communal space in which to incite productive dialogue revealing the potential of the arts within education through all forms of inquiry. The journal primarily publishes peer reviewed research-based field studies including, among others, aesthetics, art theory, music education, visual arts education, drama education, dance education, education in literature, and narrative and holistic integrated studies that cross or transcend these fields.
New book published Dec. 2010 by Routledge (New York).
"Teaching the Arts to Engage English Language Learners" was written by Margaret Macintyre Latta & Elaine Chan, University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Nebraska arts teachers helped generate many of the ideas included in the book revealing how arts classrooms can create rich and supportive contexts for ELLs to grow socially, academically, and personally.
This book is written for middle and high school arts educators working with ELLs and interested in the integration of artistic thinking into all forms of learning, across disciplines and extending into multiple contexts. There are plenty of reasons ELLs may flourish in arts classrooms. And, there are plenty of reasons for artistic thinking to permeate all learning. This book articulates these reasons, and is invested in enabling teachers and their students to act and live in classrooms in ways that reflect these values and philosophies.
The making and relating, perceiving and responding, and connecting and understanding processes of artistic thinking, create the terrain for rich curricular experiences. These processes also create the much-needed spaces for ELLs to gain communicative practice, skill, and confidence. It is, of course, essential that the teacher understand how to create these conditions, and to further their lived consequences for learning that matters. This book offers ideas and suggestions for ways in which teachers may create the classroom conditions for this learning and growth to take place.
The central purpose of this book is to provide guidance for middle and high school visual arts, music, drama, and dance teachers by informing and generating ways they can engage ELLs (alongside other students) in arts learning experiences. The book as a whole is invested in promoting a bold artistic spirit that positions teachers to enjoy guiding and building an arts curriculum that matters for all students. Collectively, the organizational parts-to-whole relationship used for this book models the complex mediation at the heart of artistic thinking that insists on interaction and deliberation by all who take part.
Specifically, the book is divided into four parts. In Part 1, readers will learn about what to expect in the language abilities of ELLs as their proficiency in English develops over time from Tony Erben, a language scholar. In Part 2, the reader will find research that maps out and supports the teaching of visual arts, music, drama, and dance as fundamental to the education of all students and as offering unique educational significances for ELLs alongside all learners. Part 3 provides access for readers to a varied range of arts learning experiences with individual attention given to visual arts, music, drama, and dance. These concrete arts experiences reveal how teachers can use their full repertoire of pedagogical practices to wholly engage and support ELLs through artistic thinking. Generative texts such as films, poems, and performances are included throughout Part 3 as points of departure and/or catalytic material intended to serve as springboards for arts educators to adapt and to change, fitting the specifics of their ELL students, other student needs, and given contexts. Additionally, to enable arts teachers to offer the necessary critical guidance for artistic thinking, teaching tips, formative assessment practices incorporating the use of student arts journals, and related instructional tables and resources are included throughout Part 3. Part 4 is intended as supplementary resources for readers who would like more specific information on given subjects/topics.
An annotated list of internet sites, reader-friendly research articles and texts offering practical findings and advice on related topics, instructional materials, and particularly helpful resources for students are identified for quick reference. A glossary is also included at the conclusion of the text as another useful feature for readers’ reference. Finally, an index is included, to ensure that particular information is easily located.
"Mirroring Self and Others: Identity and a Post-Modern Visualization of Frieda Kahlo", an article in the November 2010 "Trends Journal" (Texas Art Education Association) was written by Lori J Santos, University of Nebraska at Kearney.
News from NAEA Student Chapters
Wayne State College Student Chapter of the National Art Education Association hosted noted painter Frederick Brown to campus in November for a three day workshop. Frederick J. Brown’s work pays tribute to jazz musician icons such as Louis Armstrong and Billie Holiday. His work is represented in the Wayne State College Art collection that is being reinstalled by Pearl Hansen.
University of Nebraska at Kearney SNAEA is planning trips, as well as service and professional development activities. A major project for the club is facilitating the student exhibition and planning to create banquet centerpieces for the 2011 conference in Kearney.
University of Nebraska Lincoln SNAEA had a Pre-Service Art Educators Exhibit at the City Campus Union Gallery in November. Students also provided the Art-Making activities for Sheldon’s 2010 Dia de los Muertos.
Central Community College in Hastings design students have been designing logos. They have designed logos for a local elementary school and for new businesses in the area. Advanced design students competed in a contest to design the annual report for the CCC Hastings campus president.