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, Filed Under: From the Dean

Dean’s Insider: Creativity and resilience in our students during COVID

Detail of JJ Barrett's "Peephole," 2020. Digital photograph. Courtesy of the artist.
As we’ve adapted to new online and hybrid teaching models, our faculty members have shown extraordinary creativity this past semester, and our students have stretched themselves in new ways.

In a terrific essay in Art Education Journal, Associate Professor of Practice Megan Hildebrandt writes about teaching Studio Art courses online during the pandemic and how her students have stepped up:

“Across the board, I saw significant growth in creative problem solving, innovation, empathy, and introspection from the 50 or so students I worked with.

During the shelter-in-place, my students SHOWED UP. I do not mean just physically—I mean mentally, creatively, spiritually. They showed up in a way that, to be honest, they did not always when we were in person earlier in the semester. I think the pandemic made all of us feel more vulnerable, and that translated to a very rich last half of the semester, when many of them made significant breakthroughs in their creative work.”

She goes on to give several examples of how her students used art to process the current moment and to create structure for themselves during shelter-in-place conditions. I think you’ll be inspired at what they’ve achieved and how they’ve used their creativity to turn the constraints of the pandemic into rich learning opportunities.

While we all look forward to the day when we can welcome our students back into our studio and performance spaces at full capacity, I’m heartened to know that our faculty and students have been successful in creating positive teaching and learning outcomes this year.

Excelsior!

Dean Dempster signature

 

 

Dean Doug Dempster

, Filed Under: From the Dean

Dean’s Insider: A season for gratitude
Gratitude has been on my mind lately, and not just because of the recent Thanksgiving holiday. As I look back at all we’ve been through as a college in 2020, I’m so grateful to our faculty and staff for their herculean efforts to keep our classes and operations running. It’s no surprise that our college’s creativity and generous spirit has been at the heart of our successes in moving our college forward this year.

I’m grateful to the faculty, who dove into the brave world of Zoom and continued to create positive learning experiences for our students.

I’m grateful to our fearless department chairs, who made countless decisions to ensure safe and effective teaching and learning conditions for our students and faculty.

I’m grateful to our staff for their tireless work over the spring, summer and fall as they adapted to constantly changing plans and conditions.

I’m grateful to our students for bravely facing a year like no other, while showing compassion toward their faculty and one another.

I’m grateful to our college’s Advisory Council and donors, who have continued their incredible advocacy of and investment in our college’s success.

Thank you to each and every one of you for all that you’ve done this year. 2020 has been more stressful and challenging than we had ever imagined, but it’s made even more clear that when we work together, we can overcome mountains.

Wishing you all a safe, COVID-free holiday!

Excelsior!

Dean Dempster signature

 

 

Dean Doug Dempster

, Filed Under: From the Dean

Remembering Edith O’Donnell

Edith O’Donnell, a longtime friend to the College of Fine Arts and a member of the college’s Advisory Council, passed away this past week at the age of 94. Our thoughts and hearts go out to her family and friends.

The Dallas Morning News referred to Edith without exaggeration as the “Mount Rushmore of Dallas philanthropists.” On the UT campus, it’s no understatement to say that our college and most of our faculty and students benefit from her generosity every single day. Edith, along with her husband Peter, have truly been two of the great arts and education philanthropists of Texas.

A UT graduate, she joined the Fine Arts Advisory Council in 1990. We honored her with the E. William Doty Award—our college’s highest honor—in 1997.

Her generosity to our college extends across many disciplines, including the Chair in Latin American Art History and Criticism, the History of Music Chair and the Theatre for Youth Chair, faculty endowments that have allowed us to attract and retain distinguished artists, scholars and performers.

She also helped establish the Dallas Endowed Presidential Scholarship in Art, which has supported more than 50 students since it was created in 1994. And her Visiting Artists Chair and the Visiting Chair in the Fine and Performing Arts have allowed us to elevate the profile of our programs and to expose our students to an incredible, diverse array of visiting guest artists and their work.

We’re enormously grateful to Edith O’Donnell. I’ll miss her gentle, generous spirit greatly. But that spirit will live on in our college, in our faculty and in our students, every day for many, many years to come.

Excelsior!

Dean Doug Dempster's handwritten signature
Doug Dempster
Dean

, Filed Under: Meetings

November 18 Virtual Meeting Details

Dear Advisory Council members,

Please join us for our third Fine Arts Advisory Council virtual fall meeting on Wednesday, November 18, from 1:00 to 2:30 p.m.

Dean Doug Dempster will be in conversation with our Fine Arts Student Council President Yessmeen Moharram, and Assistant Dean Doreen Lorenzo — along with Design Chair Kate Canales and AET Interim Chair Michael Baker — will give an in-depth look at what’s new in the School of Design and Creative Technologies, including the new M.A. in Design in Health program that launched this fall in partnership with the Dell Medical School.

We will send out more details next week, but until then, please send any questions to me or to Natalie Schuessler. I hope you will join us, and as always, don’t forget to RSVP to cofarsvp@austin.utexas.edu so we know to expect you.

Warm Regards,
Sondra Lomax's handwritten signature
Sondra Lomax
Executive Director of Development

, Filed Under: Development Updates

Fall 2020 Development Report

Sondra Lomax
Executive Director and Assistant Dean for Development

Despite the pandemic, we had a great fundraising year for the college. We raised over $17 million, surpassing our annual goal of $15 million.  Now, for our new members and guests today, I need to explain that this is not $17M in spendable cash, but primarily a combination of various endowment funds dedicated to specific purposes, along with future estate gifts that people have placed in their wills.

Many of these gifts support our Top COFA funding priorities:

  • Facilities (upgrades, expansion, renovation)
  • Student support (undergrad scholarships; fellowships for grad students)
  • College-to-career initiatives (internship funding, UTNY,–our satellite campus in Manhattan, and UTLA, our residential program in Los Angeles)
  • Faculty endowment support (chairs, professorships, fellowships)
  • Program endowments (aka “excellence funds”) which are unrestricted support for specific departmental programs and initiatives.

Now it takes a village to raise to these types of resources, and in addition to the fundraising that Doug and I undertake, we have a whole team of gift officers who work with our donors around the state and beyond. These professionals are donor advisors who can work with you to match your philanthropic goals and interests with various areas of our college. They can also explain the multiple ways in which gifts to our college may be realized.  I hope you will get to know them, and welcome them when they reach out.

Thanks to the advocacy and support of our Advisory Council and Parents Council, last year was highly successful for our fundraising, and we look forward to our continued work with you during this new academic year.  Besides helping us to network with individuals, foundations and corporations, It is our sincere hope that each and every one of you will find a program or initiative in which to become engaged and of course, that you will be motivated towards an investment in the UT College of Fine Arts. The future is bright for COFA, and we are glad you are here to share in its accomplishments and to help ensure its continued success.

, Filed Under: Meetings

Your “Homework” for Next Week’s Virtual Meeting

Hello members of the College of Fine Arts Advisory Council!

I’m looking forward to seeing you again on Thursday, October 22 at 10:30 a.m. CST.

In this age of COVID-19 and Zoom, we’ve exchanged our convivial in-person Advisory Council meetings for more frequent Zoom sessions. The disadvantages of not being together a few times a year is clear enough, but video conferencing lets us share more views into the college more frequently. And we’re going to make the most of that silver lining in this pandemic cloud.

The really great, encouraging thing that I want you to know is that teaching and learning and creative invention and discovery and debate and collaboration are going on still every day. In short, education and creativity carry on! We just have to zoom in a little closer to find it.

And we’re going to make this as educational and as interesting for you as we can. If we do this right, each of our council meetings should be a little slice of college life for you to share in—at least virtually.

So, to prepare you for our meeting on the 22nd, I’ve included the following links for your homework! (And no, you won’t be quizzed or graded!)

In addition to my usual scintillating updates on what’s happening in the college, you’re going to learn about the creative and production challenges of mounting a dance performance in the age of COVID by choreographer and faculty member, Charles Anderson, head of our Dance program. Professor Anderson’s choreography is “Afro-contemporary” or “Afrocentric,” which makes his work especially timely in a period when we as a campus and nation are once again coming to grips with issues of race.

Professor Anderson’s piece, (Re)current Unrest, is in socially distanced rehearsal right now, as I write you, on the stage of Bass Concert Hall—with financial and operational support from Texas Performing Arts—in preparation for a live-streaming performance this coming Friday and Saturday (Oct. 16/17) at 7:30 p.m. CST.

Your first homework assignment is to watch the streamed performance if you can. To watch, go to this link on either evening and enter the password 2020TAD_Recurrent. Your “tickets” are free, as we will underwrite your attendance from Advisory Council dues.

Next Thursday, during our council meeting you’ll get to meet and ask questions of Professor Anderson and, I hope, one or more of his dancers. They’ll be interviewed by Robert Ramirez, chair of Theatre and Dance.

And if you’d like to do some extra-credit homework, I’ll suggest you read this article from SMU’s DataArts called “Choreographing the Future: How Dance Companies are Turning Crisis into Opportunity,” which focuses coincidentally on how the famed Dallas Black Dance Theater is responding to the pandemic.

And if you can’t do your homework, come to the Advisory Council meeting anyway and be part of the conversation.

Looking forward to seeing you! Excelsior!

Dean Dempster's handwritten signature
Doug Dempster
Dean

, Filed Under: Meetings

October 22 Virtual Meeting Details

Dear Advisory Council members,

What is exciting about gathering online, for our students and faculty, but also for the council, is that it provides the opportunity to explore new and interesting ways of engaging with each other using this technology.

Thanks to those of you who offered your feedback after the Sept. 25 fall meeting and the Oct. 5 spotlight session. We will continue to offer surveys following each of our meetings, which I hope you will complete, to help us make these events as interesting and productive as possible.

With that in mind, I invite you to join us for our second virtual fall meeting on Thursday, Oct. 22, from 10:30 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. CST, and I am looking forward to introducing some new features to this meeting, including more time to interact with your fellow members via small breakout discussions.

Additionally, we have all wished for the opportunity to return to college and classroom learning, so I hope you’ll also indulge me in assigning a little bit of homework before Oct. 22. Look for more details in an upcoming email.

Finally, don’t forget to RSVP to cofarsvp@austin.utexas.edu so we know to expect you, and feel free to contact Sondra Lomax or Natalie Schuessler with any questions.

See you Oct. 22, and thank you for your continued support and enthusiasm.

Excelsior!

Dean Dempster's handwritten signature
Doug Dempster
Dean

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