Welcome to the School of Art’s first electronic newsletter! The university took the initiative to go green a number of years ago and is considered one of the forerunners of the green movement within higher education. The School of Art is following suit to reduce its paper consumption, as well as save during this economically challenging environment, by bringing you the latest and most interesting achievements of our faculty, staff, and students via email and a newly created news and events website.
One of the most significant highlights from the last academic year was the ten-year review of the school’s academic programs. This was accompanied by a visit from the review committee to all our facilities, which took place at the end of Winter Quarter 2010. We were very pleased with the outcome. The review committee, comprised of three faculty from the University of Washington and three faculty from peer institutions, noted that the school has made significant positive changes to position itself for moving forward in sync with both the vision and foresight of a major unit within a large research university. In the spring, Divisional Dean for the Arts and Humanities, Robert Stacey, joined our quarterly faculty meeting and acknowledged our progress, noting that support would come from the College of Arts and Sciences in a number of ways. Most recently, that support came in the form of improvements to some of our facilities as well as the approval to search for two new faculty positions: one in the Division of Design for an entry-level faculty member in Interaction Design and the other in the Division of Art History for an entry-level faculty member in Medieval Italian art and architecture. We are very pleased with this and are thankful that the hard work of the faculty and staff has prompted this positive result from the college. We will keep you posted on the progress of these two searches and will also announce when the finalists will be brought to campus for the interview process since that includes public lectures.
We had record attendance for all of our BFA exhibitions in the Jacob Lawrence Gallery and the MFA thesis exhibition at the Henry Art Gallery at the end of the last academic year. Our final hurrah, the School of Art Graduation Celebration, held on 10 June in Kane Hall, was filled to capacity with more than 600 family and friends of our graduating students. This year’s alumni speaker was Steve Kaneko, Design Director at Microsoft, who spoke eloquently about the important things in life. We were also delighted and honored that, on the same day, one of our own staff members, John Taylor, Instructional Technician in 3D4M, received a Distinguished Staff Award, recognizing him for his outstanding efforts. John has also been selected to be a member of the search committee for the new University of Washington President.
I hope you enjoy our new format. Please friend us on Facebook, follow us on Twitter, or send us an email to let us know what you have been doing.
Christopher Ozubko
Director, School of Art
Professor, Design
Alison and Glen Milliman Endowed Chair in Art