Free two-day online workshop June 23-24 open to all educators

Pennsylvania College of Art & Design’s Center for Teaching & Learning will be holding a free, fully virtual, two-day workshop for educators, Supporting the Whole Professor: Overcoming Obstacles and Cultivating Curiosity, Thursday and Friday June 23-24. This event is open to all educators, says Mariah Postlewait, Director of the College’s Center for Teaching & Learning, and the focus of this third annual event has shifted from students in higher education to our “front-line educators.”

“We’ve been focused on supporting the student (in previous Teaching & Learning Center workshops), and now it is time to turn an eye to our educators and make sure they are getting attention too,” Postlewait says. Educators “have been shouldering heavy loads long before COVID-19 and that has certainly only become more complex and challenging in the years since. We want to acknowledge their many-faceted lives and offer up programming this year with ‘the whole professor’ in mind.”

Sessions include: 

• Creating an Artwork Inventory Database Using Airtable (Douglas Witmer): Learn how an easy-to-maintain inventory system is an incredibly useful tool in the documentation process of being an artist. 
• Residencies for Artists & Writers (Erin Dorney): How to find opportunities and apply, and what to expect once you’re there. 
• Art as Self-Care (Salina Almanzar-Oree, Michael Hoober, Natalie Lascek): Participants will be guided through the definition and recognition of secondary trauma, resources for continued learning, and art-based strategies for self-care and emotional regulation. 
• Value-Driven Content in the Classroom (Holly Mosher, Justin Phillips): An opportunity to co-construct a holistic framework on which to build universally supportive pedagogy. 
• Studio Reset: Strategies for Making Art When Life Gets in the Way (Heidi Leitzke): For artists, designers, and creative people who are committed to making art while maintaining a life and career in teaching or related fields. 
• Building Rubrics & Scaffolding Into the Studio Classroom (William Mammarella and Robert Young): Rubrics and scaffolding help to reinforce for students what they have learned and why it matters. Listen and discuss with studio faculty ways in which these techniques can be implemented into the studio classroom. 
• Teaching Inside the Space of Making (Alicia Link, Adam Lovitz): Traditional pedagogies often take the form of an expert and those learning from the expert, but what happens when that model is disrupted? 
• TBA session (Garrick Dorset)

Find the full two-day schedule of presentations here.

To pre-register, go here. 

For information, email Mariah Postlewait, mpostlewait@pcad.edu. 

OUR PRESENTERS

More about some of our presenters:

Salina Almanzar-Oree: A visual artist, muralist, and Program Coordinator for the Center for Creative Exploration at PCA&D, she is a graduate of Franklin & Marshall College with a double major in Art and English Literature, and Drexel University with a Masters in Arts Administration. 

Erin Dorney: An artist, writer, and former librarian based in the Adirondack Park, New York, Dorney has been in-residence at Soaring Gardens Artists’ Retreat (Laceyville, Pa.), Hewnoaks )Lovell, Maine), Tofte Lake Center (Ely, Minn.), Anne LaBastille Memorial Writers Residency (Twitchell Lake, N.Y.), and Spruceton Inn (West Kill, N.Y.). Recent literary artwork and installations include The Center for Maine Contemporary Art, Hennepin Theatre Trust, the Minnesota Center for Book Arts, and Susquehanna Art Museum. Dorney’s full-length collection, I Am Not Famous Anymore: Poems after Shia LaBeouf was published by Mason Jar Press in 2018. She is the co-founder of Fear No Lit. 

Garrick Dorset: Coordinator of Graphic Design and Photography in the Art department of Harrisburg Area Community College, Dorset holds an MFA from The University of the Arts. Alongside Zack Rudy, he is half of an art partnership known as The Huckle Buckle Boys. Their mission is focused on the synchronicity of collaboration, and they strive to unify the concept of the “flow experience” with the recklessness of individual ego as a basis for creation. In 2008, The Huckle Buckle Boys began to merge concurrent studio practices, and over a decade of experience has yielded numerous projects which include murals, branding, clothing and apparel design, print manufacturing, illustrations, and exhibits. See their work on Instagram at @thehucklebuckleboys. 

Michael Hoober: Hoober is a licensed professional counselor in Lancaster who owns and serves as Clinical Supervisor for the Connect Counseling team. He has been with PCA&D since 2004 teaching psychology and sociology classes and, more recently, as a college counselor. He has two masters degrees, from LaSalle University and from the University of Pennsylvania. 

Natalie Lascek: Lascek is a visual artist and Director of the Center for Creative Exploration at PCA&D. She is a graduate of Edinboro University with a BFA in weaving and fibers and teaching certification in art K-12. She is currently in the Masters in Arts Leadership and Cultural Management program with Colorado State University. 

Heidi Leitzke: A visual artist exploring the wonders of nature and realms of imagination, Leitzke has exhibited in group and solo exhibitions around the world, from Lancaster, where she lives and works, to Swaziland, South Africa, as part of the U.S. State Department’s Art in Embassies program. Her drawings and thread paintings have been included in exhibitions at several Philadelphia-based galleries, including Gross McCleaf Gallery, Cerulean Arts Gallery, and University City Arts League. She earned her MFA in Painting at Western Carolina University and studied at the Chautauqua School of Art in New York. Leitzke serves on the Demuth Foundation Board of Directors and is an Assistant Professor of Art and Director of the Eckert Art Gallery at Millersville University. 

Alicia Link: A Philadelphia-based artist and educator, Link earned an MFA in Studio Art from University of Texas at Austin and a BFA in Painting from Boston University. Her work offers a type of expanded painting that manifests itself across disciplines. Using fantasy and humor to explore the relationship between loss, love, and the body, Link often lingers in a space that draws attention to the invisibility of trauma. Her work has been shown in Brooklyn, Boston, and Austin, among other locations, and she’s been the recipient of a full fellowship to the Vermont Studio Center (2016), a Capacity Building Award from the City of Austin Cultural Arts Division (2019), and an Illuminate the Arts Grant from the Philadelphia Office of Arts, Culture, and the Creative Economy (2021). That same year, she finished a month-long solo residency at Tiger Strikes Asteroid in Philadelphia. 

Adam Lovitz: Inspired by the patinas that build up on surfaces over the course of everyday life, Lovitz focuses on the accumulation of layers to create final dimensional compositions which hover between abstraction and figuration. Lovitz incorporates textures into his paint, such as locally procured schist, which result in surfaces that have an even greater appearance of depth. This inclusion of terrestrial texture gestures toward the star stuff in us all. Lovitz is a graduate of the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, and his works have recently been exhibited at the Woodmere Art Museum, AUTOMAT Gallery and Fleisher/Ollman Gallery, VCUArts (Virginia), The Painting Center (NYC), the MANA Contemporary (Chicago), and SPRING/BREAK Art Show and Trestle Gallery, both in New York Ciyt. 

William Mammarella: A Lancaster-based artist, Mammarella’s recent work explores the use of the figure in a contemporary dialogue with tradition. Skepticism of the past, doubt about the future, and well-aged homoeroticism are all elements in myth changed into painting. Mammarella is Chair of the Foundation Department at Pennsylvania College of Art & Design, where he has taught since 1997. He received his BA from Rutgers University and an MFA from University of Delaware. His most influential artistic experiences were several study trips to Europe and a long sojourn as a caretaker of a 265-acre retired farm in Nottingham, Pa. 

Holly Mosher: Mosher is Chair of Business Programs and Director of Distance Education at Pennsylvania College of Art & Design. She is an instructor for supply chain management. She has a BS from Eastern Michigan University in Fashion Merchandising and Marketing and an MS from Eastern Michigan University in Apparel, Textiles, and Merchandising, and is working on a Ph.D. in Education Leadership. She has a wide variety of retail experience including retail department store buyer, the purchaser of goods, hands-on sales, and supervising sales staff in personnel, inventory, and scheduling. 

Justin Phillips: Phillips is a fine artist and Assistant Dean of Academic Affairs at Pennsylvania College of Art & Design. His artwork explores meanings and nuances that are embedded in his formalist mixed media works, where he incorporates elements of drawing, painting, and collage. He employs a range of creative methodologies such as chance elements, intuitive mark-making, conjuring rhythms, erasure, as well as personally established rules and systems. Phillips’ work ranges from drawings completed in one sitting to deeply layered works where he explores sustained and deep efforts to form complex and contemplative works. Phillips’ work is inspired by the energy and dynamics of daily life and the inner workings of the world in which we live. He is fascinated with the connection between visual language and the human experience, and he often describes his works as meditations or physical embodiment of meditation rituals or routines. His practice is a never-ending survey of the connection between one’s self and their surroundings. 

Douglas Witmer: The Philadelphia-based artist is known internationally within a field of reductive geometric abstraction. His work is exhibited regularly and internationally and is held in the collections of several public museums. Early in his career, Witmer worked behind the scenes at museums such as The Philadelphia Museum of Art, The Barnes Foundation, and The Rosenbach Museum and Library, where he interacted regularly with conservators and registrars, learning firsthand the importance of archival practices and recordkeeping. douglaswitmer.com.

Main photo credit: Hatice EROL / Pixabay