Teaching

Statement on Teaching

Since being awarded tenure in May of 2018, my teaching and mentorship has evolved and responded to a series of challenges, including the 2020 global pandemic that both disrupted and influenced my current teaching and pedagogy.  As an early adopter of hybrid teaching formats through collaboration with course designers from the VCUalt Lab (now the Center for Teaching and Learning Excellence): I actively assisted my colleagues with adapting our courses to the online environment.  I shared my online/hybrid assignments with both faculty at VCU and my colleagues teaching photography nationally via FotoFika in collaboration with the Society for Photographic Education. I redesigned my Professional Practice course to take advantage of the ubiquity of  teleconferencing software like Zoom and Microsoft teams and hosted artists, curators and alumni from around the world.  I continue to leverage the accessibility of these technologies in most of my teaching.

I also responded directly to the over-reliance on these remote teaching technologies by hosting socially distanced course meet-ups and field trips in 2021/22 and by proposing and running a new course called “Participatory Art Walking”.  I first ran the course in the Spring semester of 2022.  The premise of the class is that we would never meet in a classroom, allowing for adequate social distancing, and that we would walk the entire city of Richmond over the 16 week semester using the 16 stops on GRTC Pulse Bus line as the framework of the class.  Each student chose a stop and led an hour walking tour of that stop, researching and documenting the entire process for inclusion in a final collective project.  I have since co-taught the class two more times with Michael Lease from the Institute for Contemporary Art at VCU in Spring 2024 and 2026.  Each iteration of the class ends with a collective final project including a Podcast that we recorded live on the GRTC route and a limited edition Zine.

My experience with hybrid teaching modalities included research and investment into portable wireless microphones, which both improved the learning environment for remote participants, but also added opportunities for archiving important teaching and learning milestones. As one of the senior capstone instructors for 7 of the last 10 years in my department, I have an extensive archive of our BFA exhibitions, including recordings of final capstone critiques.  I have also adapted our Fall semester Professional Practices curriculum to prepare the BFA cohort for the Spring Capstone exhibition including, exhibition preparation, frame building, writing workshops and exhibitions that The Anderson.  I also help the students “self”organize themselves in committees for completing of their capstone projects, including the organization of professional portfolio reviews and artists talks.