Intergenerational Implications of Ritual in Art Education

This article introduces the concept of ritual and the role it can play in art education across generations from PK-12 schools to community collaborations. Three authors elaborate on research, personal experiences, and applications of ritual in their art education practice. The first introduces ritual within personal, historical, cultural, psychological, and sociological contexts. Then, relates these to art education curriculum and an intergenerational community collaboration. Author 2 shares experience with ritual-based artists using performance, body adornment and modification to communicate creative sacred/secular expression. Author 3 describes her hesitancy and eventual success in engaging preadolescents in ritual-based discussions. All of these perspectives hope to inspire readers’ ritual research and practice across generations

SoTL Stories: Narrative + Critical Friends = Meaningful Assessment Goals

Storytelling can be engaging as it is both personal and public. Assessment, on the other hand, is a word few dare to utter. Yet, when the two concepts are combined, deep meaning, vulnerability, and a focus on student learning emerges. This session engages participants in storytelling about teaching and learning as two professors tell the story of how they co-facilitated a SoTL Group focused on programmatic assessment at a mid-western university. Presenters will share their approach and research findings, and attendees will leave with strategies for implementing such work within their own research settings

Visualizing Cancer: A Transdisciplinary Art and Biology Collaborative

It would be safe to say that nearly every student enrolled in college knows someone who has been impacted by cancer. After all, cancer killed nearly 8.2 million people worldwide in 2012 (World Cancer Report, 2014). Using this fact as the impetus for change we decided to make cancer the focus of a “transdisciplinary” (Marshall, 2014) collaborative effort to simulate a reciprocal-learning experience between undergraduate biology and visual art students attending a university in Southeastern Michigan. The goal of the 2015 project was to create an active and authentic collaboration utilizing the university visual art and biology curricula. By engaging and connecting scientific and artistic critical thinking processes, we wanted to know: Could we design a class structure that would enable collaborative teams of art and biology students to create a visual model that represents a hallmark of cancer designed so that the model could also stand alone on artistic merit? In other words, could cancer visualization be transformed into works worthy of gallery display while maintaining scientific accuracy? In this paper we discuss the planning, implementation, results, and impact this work has had upon the way we now envision transdisciplinary collaboration