The Faculty Fellows at Pratt’s Center for Teaching and Learning work directly with the Director of the CTL and in collaboration with their School Deans and Chairs to advance pedagogical practices for Pratt faculty, and especially in alignment with the specific needs of each School. The CTL Faculty Fellowship is a year-long commitment, with the ultimate goal of creating school or department based communities of learning, as well as advancing cross-disciplinary institute-wide strategies to improve classroom and studio practices and inclusive pedagogies.

2024 CTL Faculty Fellows

Please join us in welcoming the 2024 Faculty Fellows! Their project descriptions are included below.

Todd Ayoung, Foundation

Todd Ayoung is a transdisciplinary visual artist, cultural worker and adjunct professor in studio art at Pratt Institute and Parsons, The New School. Ayoung is originally from Trinidad and Tobago and from the age of 11 was educated in the United States. He is a founding member of the artist collective REPOhistory, served on two steering committees of Godzilla, An Asian Pacific Islander Artist Network, worked with GulfLabor Artist Coalition and was on the steering committee which helped organize the Peoples Cultural Plan for NYC.

FORGET EDUCATION

His proposal for CTL fellowship 2024: FORGET EDUCATION proposes to

  • Infuse diversity into major or core curriculum courses.
  • Craft Open Educational Resources to enrich cross-disciplinary or interdisciplinary learning among faculty, staff, and students.
  • Research how decoloniality, labor/class issues of pedagogy intersect and inform the above.

Gopinaath Kannabiran, School of Information

Gopinaath Kannabiran is a researcher in the field of Human Computer Interaction (HCI), design educator, sexual rights activist, Inclusion Diversity Equity and Accessibility (IDEA) advisor, and yoga instructor. He is trained as a feminist socio-technical researcher with a background in critical inquiry methodology and currently working as an Assistant Professor at Pratt Institute School of Information. He has published award winning research articles in top tier academic conferences and is a regular columnist for the ACM interactions magazine.

Project description:

Wellbeing is a topic that spans across multiple areas of life ranging from, but not limited to, emotional, physical, financial, social, and environmental. Designing technologies to support information experiences and communal interactions for wellbeing is a complex undertaking that requires further research. This research project will explore pedagogical approaches to teaching a 16-week graduate course about ‘Design for Wellbeing’. This project is informed and inspired by various strands of ecological feminism that emphasize relational ways of knowing. My research and its outcomes will be primarily grounded through the practice of Interaction Design (IxD) and engage with topics relevant to the field of Human Computer Interaction (HCI).

Shayla Lawz, School of Liberal Arts and Sciences

Shayla Lawz is a writer and interdisciplinary artist working at the intersection of text, sound, and performance. She has received fellowships from Cave Canem, Jack Jones Literary Arts, The Center for African American Poetry and Poetics, The Hurston/Wright Foundation, and The Digital Studies Center at Rutgers-Camden. Her writing/hybrid work appears in McSweeney’s Quarterly, The Poetry Foundation, Catapult, Obsidian, and The Poetry Project, among other publications. She has been a visiting writer at Rutgers University, The University of Arizona Poetry Center, and Brown University where she received her MFA. Her debut poetry collection “speculation, n.” (2021) was chosen by Ilya Kaminsky for the 2020 Autumn House Poetry Prize and has been featured in Poets & Writers, The Poetry Foundation, The Slowdown, and NPR’s On The Record. She lives in Brooklyn and teaches in the department of Humanities and Media Studies at Pratt Institute.

Project Description

All art does not have to engage with the social/political landscape of the world, yet all art has the power to. In HMS, I design classes that focus on the political/social power of performance—thinking about how our bodies act as transmitters of images, words, and movement or (social) movements. During the CTL fellowship, I will focus on understanding more about how students view their power to spark political and social conversations through their art. I take on this research with the goal of creating new courses and supporting already existing courses across SLAS that allow students to engage their creative practices with a social lens. I plan to interview faculty and students, lead a group workshop with other members of the faculty, and organize an artist visit to help students understand how to wield their creative talents and create social conversations with intention through their art. With this fellowship, I will have the opportunity to engage more deeply with student ideas and understand how they view their creative power. Ultimately, my goal is for students to be able to better decide how they want their work to exist in the world.

Chelsea Limbird, School of Design

Chelsea Limbird is an interdisciplinary designer, artist, writer and educator based in New York City and Rhode Island. Her work focuses on processes of narrative, memory and presence, as generators for line, word, image and experience. She teaches design studio, representation and interdisciplinary theory courses at Pratt Institute and Parsons the Newschool for Design. She has held teaching positions at the Rhode Island School of Design, Brown University and the China Academy of Art.

She has exhibited drawing, painting, writing, photography and artist books in New York, Rhode Island, Philadelphia and Tokyo and has published prose, poetry and design projects internationally. Chelsea graduated from Brown University with a double concentration in Economics and Architectural Studies, and received a Master of Architecture degree from the Rhode Island School of Design.

Project Description

This fellowship project explores the role of the human body in the creative process.  The study will review curriculum across a range of disciplines and levels of course work at Pratt to understand unique approaches as well as methodologies that we share.  An initial search and series of conversations into existing and current practices that approach and integrate the physical body through representation and documentation will expand to include the measurable and unmeasurable elements of the human experience and the human senses. 

The proposal investigates approaches where observation, experience and analysis of the body’s physical and sensorial presences yield representation in a range of media, scales and formats.  Relationships between body creating work, body in the work, and body as the work, will simultaneously look deeply into paths within individual disciplines while revealing possible opportunities for connection and integration between and across structures of learning.

Dana Reilly, School of Art

Dana Reilly is a documentary filmmaker. Her films are intimate and collaborative, exploring how social expectations shape women’s sense of self. She is grateful to those who share their stories and time with her.

Her short film, MS DIVA TRUCKER, premiered at Big Sky Documentary Film Festival in 2021, won the Jury Award at the PBS Shorts Festival and is currently available to stream on NoBudge.com. Her most recent film, a personal documentary, FAVORITE DAUGHTER, screened globally at festivals including Telluride, DOC NYC, and DocAviv, was picked up by MTV Documentary Films, and is currently streaming on Paramount+. She is currently developing a feature-length film about women in bodybuilding.

Reilly holds an MFA in Film Production from the University of Texas at Austin and a BA in International Relations from Brown University. She is a Visiting Professor in the Film/Video Department at Pratt, where she teaches professional practices and contributes to departmental efforts to integrate inclusive pedagogy into curriculum and classroom dynamics.

Project Description

In the film industry, accessibility is often viewed as a special effort to accomodate a disabled minority, rather than as a necessity for the wellbeing of our whole community. Without a seismic shift in our thinking about accessibility, our DEI efforts will fall short.

At Pratt, an Accessibility Taskforce was founded in 2015 to make a more accessible Pratt campus. Their goal is to expand beyond purely physical access to include reducing digital and technological barriers, destigmatizing disability, and challenging ableist assumptions.

In partnership with the CTL, I propose an effort to research and implement ways to integrate these accessibility goals in the classrooms of the Film/Video department. Specifically, I would like to focus on the use of technology in the classroom — including physical equipment such as lights, cameras, and audio recorders, NLE software like Premiere and DaVinci, and film screening setups.

First, I will conduct a survey of faculty and students in studio classes, such as Production Studio, Post-Production Studio, Cinematography + Lighting Design, Sound Design for Film/Video, and Screenwriting, to identify when and how accessibility is taught in the classroom. Second, I will identify opportunities in the film production workflow to integrate Accessible Filmmaking (AFM) best practices, to ensure accessibility is not relegated to an afterthought during post-production or distribution. I will share these findings with faculty at the Film/Video department at the end of the Spring semester, to ensure they have time to integrate new exercises and approaches into the Fall 2024 lesson-planning.

Third, I have a unique opportunity next semester to build AFM practices into a class from its inception — I will be teaching and contributing to the curriculum of the new “Post Production Studio,” and I will apply my CTL-funded research into translation/accessibility in my classroom. I will conduct focus groups with students in my class, to determine the impact of the revisions on their learning experience and report back to the department and the CTL.

Film is a uniquely collaborative medium, which requires communication across departments and interpersonally in order to execute on a collective vision. All students will benefit from learning about the ways in which information, sound, text and image, are interpreted by those who are hard of hearing, visually impaired, or neurodivergent — just as students are taught cultural context and assumptions in our classrooms to navigate relationships with diverse crew and audiences, they should be taught ableist assumptions and ways to mitigate them.

My proposed project will help the Film/Video department and beyond deliver on Pratt’s mission to emphasize diversity and inclusion and provide a safe, stimulating environment for students to grow and create.

MJ Sieira, School of Architecture

MJ Sieira is an architect and an independent scholar who studies social, political, and cultural aspects of our living environment through film, literature, design, theater, and installation art. Sieira has received numerous awards and grants including many with interdisciplinary collaborators. She teaches in the First Professional Master of Architecture program at Pratt Institute, where she was elected to a number of leadership positions including Faculty Trustee, Peer Review Chair, Dean’s Faculty Council, Academic Advisor for several student groups, and Finance Officer for the Academic Senate. Also part of the leadership team for several architecture accreditation visits, Sieira’s core curriculum coordination positions led to the development of professional courses that received commendations from the NAAB. Internationally she is a founding faculty member of the CA Institute in Santiago de Compostela, an organization that researches and teaches the architecture and culture of western Spain and northern Portugal. A book of interviews with over thirty architects and scholars from this region is forthcoming. Sieira has presented at multiple national and international conferences and her work on the social and cultural space in the films of Agnès Varda was recently published in a collection of essays on film and architecture. Sieira holds a Master of Architecture from the University of Pennsylvania and a Bachelor of Arts in architecture with theater from Yale University.

The Stubborn Usefulness of Film in the Design Classroom

This project investigates methodologies for the use of video in the teaching of spatial concepts across multiple art and design disciplines. How can in-person and online best teaching practices be combined toward novel approaches that respond to our contemporary mediated quotidian environments? This project grew out of a film and architecture course I developed in the School of Architecture in which students make spatial constructions with moving images. The course evolved as film-watching habits evolved, from gathering in a theater space to watch films not widely available, to watching them in individual pods in the library basement as films old an new were digitized and distributed in DVDs, to streaming on our phones during our subway ride to class. How do we best use this powerful, and now everpresent, medium in our classrooms? Across disciplines and involving faculty across the Institute, the study of the space through film and the study of film through space offers students and faculty opportunities to address topics relevant to multiple learning experiences. The goal of my project is to involve, in conversations, faculty in other art and design fields as I present and further develop lessons on the socio-cultural space of film. The goal is a curated film list that covers a range of geographical, socio-economic, socio-political, and cultural conditions that are not only necessary for our future artists and designers to thrive, but also best practices in a learning community that seeks both imagination and equity in its teaching

Sophia Sobers, School of Art

Sophia Sobers is an interdisciplinary artist and educator specializing in installation, sound, and site specific work. Her work utilizes technology as a means of connection between natural and digital worlds. Sobers currently teaches in Pratt’s Department of Digital Art undergraduate Art + Technology and graduate Interactive Arts programs. Her teaching spans a range of subjects from creative coding and interactive media to core studio classes. Sobers holds a BS in Architecture from the New Jersey Institute of Technology and an MFA in Digital + Media from the Rhode Island School of Design and has exhibited her work nationally in group and solo exhibitions.

Fostering Play in Art + Technology

I’m interested in creating a catalog of resources and guidelines of teaching methodologies within the context of learning methods in regards to new and established technologies. What are the ways in which teaching new, often transdisciplinary, technologies are successful? How are these teaching methods implemented within the classroom setting and is there room for improvement? Finally, how do students transcend over difficulties of learning new technologies in order to reach a place of continuous creative play and exploration beyond that of a given class assignment.

Fostering Play in Art + Technology is about investigating ways to encourage play and exploration within the context of technical learning in DDA’s Art + Technology and Interactive Arts programs in order to make learning potentially technically challenging platforms accessible and inclusive, thus lowering potential barriers to entry. Through the process of exploring and cataloging current methodologies and approaches towards teaching new and established technologies within the classroom, a catalog of common practices and knowledge databases will be developed for working with creative technologies.

Alice J. Walkiewicz, School of Liberal Arts and Sciences

Alice J. Walkiewicz is an educator and art historian, with over a decade of experience teaching both in the academic classroom and as a public historian. She holds her Ph.D. in Art History from the CUNY Graduate Center, where her dissertation explored the relationship between fashion, labor, and urban-industrialization in 19th-century European and U.S. visual culture. Along with courses related to her specialty, she has extensively taught the Foundation year two-semester global art history survey required as part of the General Education Core, and has been an active faculty member for Pratt’s first-year Learning Community program.

The First-Year Student’s Experience & the Art/Design History Survey

My project is centered around the first-year student’s experience. I have been a longtime instructor of the two-semester Art History survey (HAD 111: Themes in Art and Culture I and HAD 112: Themes in Art and Culture II) as well as a faculty member for Pratt’s Learning Community. In this capacity, I often teach the same close-knit group of students for their whole first year, which has made me mindful of how important the Foundation year is for students (in a variety of metrics). As required courses and part of the General Education Core Curriculum at Pratt, we engage with a large portion of first-year students and are in the position to help them through the transition into higher education through the groundwork we set in terms of exposing them to material, skill-building, and creating a sense of community and belonging. For a number of years HAD has been working to redesign how we approach the material covered by HAD 111 and 112, to best meet the needs of today’s Pratt student. My project seeks to build on this important discussion by delving into first-year students’ experiences with HAD 111 and 112 beyond the content itself.

Past CTL Faculty Fellows

2023 CTL Faculty Fellows

2023 Fellows Showcase Recording

Rebecca Evanhoe, School of Information

Rebecca Evanhoe is an author, teacher, and conversation designer. With degrees in chemistry and fiction writing, she’s passionate about how interdisciplinary thinking can combine arts, humanities, sciences, and tech. She teaches UX writing and conversation design as a visiting assistant professor at Pratt Institute, and co-authored Conversation with Things: UX Design for Chat and Voice (Rosenfeld Media, 2021). 

Writing Skills for Students in the School of Information

I teach two classes in the School of Information that help students improve existing writing skills, and develop new ones. Through this experience, I see a need for more writing support for students, both for their specific domains, and for general career and communication purposes. 

I will develop a more comprehensive understanding of students’ “writing skill ecosystems”: what skills they have, what skills they need, what resources they currently have at their disposal, what additional resources might help students advance their skills, and what resources might help faculty members support this. I will conduct interviews with both faculty and students, and I plan to research expectations for writing skills from an industry perspective. 

I’ll apply what I learn in two ways: evaluating and improving my own courses, and documenting some meaningful insights to help SI inform future planning around writing curriculum.

Mid-Year Report

Rebecca Evanhoe Final Report

Rebecca Krucoff, School of Art

Rebecca Krucoff is a teacher, museum educator, and historic preservationist with three decades of experience working in museums and schools to teach the public at all age levels, create curriculum, and train teaching professionals. She specializes in collaborative planning and teaching models, exemplified by the creation of several co-taught courses for Pratt institute including Beyond and Between Pratt’s Gates, an interdisciplinary course developed by Pratt’s Art & Design Education Department (ADE) and the Graduate Center for Planning and the Environment’s Historic Preservation Program. Rebecca holds a Master of Science in Historic Preservation from Pratt Institute and a Master of Science in Education from Bank Street College of Education in New York City.

Culturally Responsive Pedagogy: Theory and Practice

My practice-led research and scholarly interests are focused on Culturally Responsive Pedagogy (CRP). CRP is central to equity, diversity and inclusion in K-12 education and in teacher education programs. CRP is a set of beliefs that value racial and cultural diversity in learning, and sees those differences as assets. It responds to the learning experiences, cultural values, and heritage of traditionally marginalized communities to create learning experiences that are relevant and effective, and result in academic success. (Gay 2010)  

Art and Design Education (ADE) students are required to take courses in other departments such as Social Sciences and Art History, and so I am interested in incorporating Culturally Responsive Pedagogy (CRP) on multiple and simultaneous levels: Faculty Development, Curriculum (theory), and Curriculum (clinical practice). My project will focus on deepening faculty knowledge of Culturally Responsive Teaching with a view to creating a CRP-rich curriculum and graduating students skilled in implementing CRP in their K-12 classrooms. 

Mid-Year Report

Rebecca Krucoff Final Report

Natalie Moore, Foundation

Natalie Moore is an educator, artist, and designer working in Brooklyn, NY. She is currently an Associate Professor in the Foundation Department. As an educator, Moore has worked in collaboration with faculty members across the institute on interdisciplinary projects including Drawing Democracies (2013, 2015), Visible Epistemologies (2018/19), First Year Conversations, (2021/22). She has been active in the Faculty Learning Communities at Pratt Institute since 2012 and presented on a wide range of pedagogical strategies at conferences nationwide. She has exhibited her work nationally and internationally for over 30 years; her work has been featured in Sculpture Magazine, CNN International and reviewed in several publications including the New York Times, New York Newsday and USA Today. Her design work includes work for numerous educational, non-profit, and commercial clients such as Rethink Autism, the Toffler Associates, Sprint, Scientific American, the Hale House, and the Guggenheim Museum. Moore received a MA Studio Art, NYU in 1992 and BA Fine Art, from University of California, Santa Cruz in 1987.

Mentoring Partners –  In collaboration with Dina Weiss

What does mentoring look like at Pratt? In what ways do faculty and students already make themselves available in a mentoring role? How can Pratt facilitate a mentor exchange in a non-hierarchical manner to bridge generations and varying levels of teaching and learning experiences? How can mentoring exchanges be developed and sustained as peer-to-peer between faculty, undergraduate, and graduate students? Initially, we will gather information through interviews and surveys of faculty and students’ experiences with mentoring across the institute. We plan to pilot a mentoring exchange with both faculty and students in the Fall of 2023.  The research aims to highlight existing ways mentoring is happening and identify new methods to expand and sustain the mentor experience at Pratt.

Mid-Year Report

Mentoring Partners Final Report

Renee Ortega, School of Art

With the Center for Teaching and Learning fellowship, I propose a series of community-based conversations and creative experiential to foster integration of an intercultural communication framework. Hands-on guided engagements would incorporate talks centered around local spaces and would involve community members, with the objective of being more inclusive and supportive. Participants would complete the Intercultural Development Inventory (IDI), receive a development plan, be offered direct engagement, spotlight the value of Brooklyn as a cultural resource, seek to understand the social, ethical, and environmental impacts of the community, and seek to enhance, improve and further develop their intercultural communication lens. Corresponding reflective practice would dissect a mono-cultural lens and foster ways of engaging through an inter-cultural lens to develop enduring relationships and promote meaningful change.

Mid-Year Report

Renee Ortega Final Report

Swati Piparsania, School of Design

Swati Piparsania is a designer and educator whose work incorporates making objects and devising movement. She is interested in understanding built environments shape behaviors esp. as a form of surveillance and oppression. She utilizes elements of sculpture, dance and theater to research and develop a series of sculptural propositions that critique a body’s inherent design and its choreography in space. This inquiry through quotidian objects reinvents them, making anew ordinary social experience. As a result the audience transcends the role of a viewer and assumes the role of a curious performer. 

Swati (b. Bhilai, India) has worked as a furniture designer at two leading modular interior firms in India: Homelane and Livspace. She has presented her work at various venues including Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin, PACT Zollverein in Essen, Kenyon College in Ohio, and School of Form in Poland. 

She received her MFA in 3D Design from Cranbrook Academy of Art and BFA in Furniture and Spatial Design from Srishti School of Art, Design, and Technology. She currently teaches Industrial design as an Assistant Professor at Pratt Institute, NY.

Unlearning Classroom Space

“Designing is fundamental to being human – we design, that is to say, we deliberate, plan and scheme in ways which prefigure our actions and makings – in turn we are designed by out designing and by that which we have designed.”
 —  Anne-Marie Willis

Learning is a process of acceptance, of vulnerability and of exposure. For each one present, it is a different process and yet a collective experience. In the project with CTL, I am interested in surveying what are good environments of learning and how changing aspects can promote creativity. I would like to do this by documenting current ways of seeing how bodies navigate the classroom space and challenging that pattern through object based intervention. I would like to do this across schools as each medium, technique and discipline has its unique pedagogical system. My design practice is critical in nature and it brings debates, arguments and biases to the forefront of the conversation. I am interested in doing the same spatially and learning about the relationship of moving bodies and learning bodies- and how one can push the other. 

Mid Year Report

Unlearning Classroom Space: Swati Piparsania – Final Report

Dina Weiss, School of Art

Dina Weiss is a New York City-based artist and educator, who holds her M.F.A. in Sculpture from Parsons, School for Art & Design, and a B.S. in Studio Art from New York University. She also studied art history at the American University of Paris in France and studio art at the Pennsylvania State University in State College, PA. She is the Assistant Chair of Fine Arts and a Visiting Associate Professor at Pratt Institute. She works with both MFA and BFA programs, oversees all public programming and outreach, and develops new initiatives for students, faculty, and alumni. Recently, she worked with the School of Art, School of Design, Photography, and Art & Design Education departments to design a Graduate Teaching & Learning Certificate and is a Center for K-12 Research Fellow. Before working at Pratt, Weiss was the Executive Director at Artists Alliance, Inc. and Director of Cuchifritos Gallery & Project Space in New York. She taught at Parsons, Art & Design School. And worked as a Museum Education Coordinator for the Museum of Arts & Design, The Drawing Center, and the Dia Art Foundation. She was an Education Consultant for the New Museum, where she co-authored a chapter of the curriculum in Rethinking Contemporary Art and Multicultural Education, published by Routledge and the New Museum. She has exhibited work across the country, most recently at Equity Gallery in NYC, and currently is an artist in residence at The James Gallery, The Graduate Center, CUNY.

Mentoring Partners –  In collaboration with Natalie Moore 

What does mentoring look like at Pratt? In what ways do faculty and students already make themselves available in a mentoring role? How can Pratt facilitate a mentor exchange in a non-hierarchical manner to bridge generations and varying levels of teaching and learning experiences? How can mentoring exchanges be developed and sustained as peer-to-peer between faculty, undergraduate, and graduate students? Initially, we will gather information through interviews and surveys of faculty and students’ experiences with mentoring across the institute. We plan to pilot a mentoring exchange with both faculty and students in the Fall of 2023.  The research aims to highlight existing ways mentoring is happening and identify new methods to expand and sustain the mentor experience at Pratt.

Mid-Year Report

Mentoring Partners Final Report

2022 CTL Faculty Fellows

The 2022 CTL Faculty Fellows and their projects are listed below. Click here to watch recordings of each of their presentations at the Fellows Showcase!

Brian Brooks, Foundation

Brian Brooks is an Associate Professor with CCE in the First Year Art & Design Foundation Department, teaching Light Color & Design and Visualization & Representation and is also an Instructor in the Center for Art, Design, and Community Engagement K-12’s three-year Pratt Young Scholars high school program teaching Figure Drawing. Brian has been investigating how learners layer, expand and integrate their experience and knowledge in visual problem-solving processes. He is interested in the student journey from high school through their years at Pratt and beyond. His perspective is informed by a career in museum/studio education at the Brooklyn Museum, and more recently with an in depth engagement with the multi-year Faculty Learning Community focused on the Transfer of Learning campus-wide. Brian is a painter and drawer.

The Project

Brian’s Fellowship Project Plan is to continue developing faculty engagement opportunities through the Foundation Department’s SPARK pedagogical forum, while creating more Pratt-wide connections for faculty and students to share and engage with each other. We expect “foundations” to provide a strong and comprehensive base upon which we build, educationally, in all directions and provide for our students diverse needs and aspirations. SPARK aims to highlight the varied ways we do this with our students, on the ground, across the Institute. Sharing how learning happens in our classrooms and studios will broaden and deepen the educational connections at Pratt.

Mid-Year Report

Recording and Resources from Brian Brooks’ Faculty Spotlight Presentation on Nov. 15, 2022

Brian Brooks – Final Report

Jerrod Delaine, School of Architecture

Jerrod Delaine is a Professor at Pratt Institute. He is an experienced Real Estate Developer, with a skill set that includes Design, Construction, Finance, Affordable Housing, and Asset Management. Jerrod is CEO of The Delaine Companies. The firm nationwide platform focuses on workforce and affordable housing. His current focus is utilizing access to capital markets, improving communities through real estate finance and development. Jerrod has been in the real estate development sphere for 10 years. Jerrod spent the first five years of his career at Forum Architecture and Interior Design, the majority of his efforts focused on project managing affordable housing projects in the southeast region of the United States. Jerrod has a Bachelor’s Degree and Bachelor’s of Arts Degree in Architecture from Florida A & M University School of Architecture and Environmental Technology. He has a Master of Science degree from New York University Schack Institute of Real Estate. Jerrod Delaine is the co-founder of the Desegregation Think Tank at Pratt Institute School of Architecture.

Desegregate Cities

I have an extensive resource of knowledge on housing policy and housing justice. I would like to further advance this scholarship. I’m now in talks with thought leaders in the nation on this topic. The Desegregation Think Tank has been an excellent center of thought and research, including written policy papers and hosted speaking engagements. With this fellowship, I am seeking to advance these efforts as well as better share this knowledge bank with Pratt faculty and department chairs.

Recording and Resources from Jerrod Delaine’s Faculty Spotlight Presentation on Sep. 27, 2022

Mid year Report

Jerrod Delaine – Final Report

Langdon Graves, School of Art

Langdon Graves is a Virginia-born, New York City-based artist who holds a BFA from Virginia Commonwealth University in Painting and Printmaking and an MFA from Parsons School of Design.  She is adjunct faculty at Parsons where she teaches for the First Year Program and HEOP; a Visiting Professor of Fine Arts at Pratt Institute; and teaches teen artists across NYC’s public schools for the DOE-affiliated organizations Studio in a School and Lincoln Center Education.  She has facilitated online workshops and professional development trainings for the NYC Department of Education and the Arts in Education Roundtable, and participated as a mentor in a three year mentorship grant for new art teachers through the Office of Arts and Special Projects. Langdon is represented by Dinner Gallery in New York City and has had solo exhibitions in New York, Florida, Virginia, Arkansas, Vermont and Massachusetts and has participated in group shows and fairs throughout the United States, Canada, Europe and Australia.  Langdon has attended the Fountainhead Residency in Miami, the Kunstenaarsinitiatief Residency and Exhibition Program in the Netherlands, the Object Limited residency in Bisbee, Arizona and will attend STONELEAF Retreat in the summer of 2022.  She is a recipient of Canson & Beautiful Decay’s Wet Paint Grant and has been featured in Art in America, VICE, Juxtapoz, Art F City, Blouin Artinfo, Hyperallergic and Madeline Schwartzman’s See Yourself X.

Teaching and Learning from Generation Z: Bridging the Gap

In the sixteen years I’ve been teaching higher education and high school-aged students, I’ve not seen as much of a shift in relatability between myself and my students as I have over the last two years.  Gen-Z students’ familiarity and fluidity with virtual modes of learning, making and interacting (and living) are influenced by factors that are different from my experience, and different enough from even Millennials’ experience that friends and colleagues younger than myself can see it.  This has come in up many conversations with colleagues and in higher ed podcasts I listen to, and I think it’s an issue that will become increasingly more apparent as the digital-and-social-media-native incoming students get more involved not just in how information is shared and received, but in designing the information.  For fellowship research, I’d want to focus less on the technologies, themselves and more on the social impact of the disparity, and learn from faculty and students about their experiences and concerns, when they’ve been able to bridge the gap, when it hasn’t been an issue, and when it has. I think exploring this through the lens of visual arts education would allow us to examine and appreciate the contributions we make as artists to visual culture, how we’re impacted by it and how we can benefit from a generational span, rather than feel hindered by a gap.  I’m hoping I could put together information that would help faculty develop strategies to support their students and feel supported, themselves.  

Questions to which I’m seeking answers:

  • What are the most significant generational differences and what created them?
  • What stresses do these students feel and what are their priorities?  
  • What are the misconceptions about their generation?  
  • What does an inspired, creative professional life look like, to them?
  • How can I successfully, objectively communicate the benefits of my experience, as their teacher?

I want to engage in a series of in-depth, qualitative interviews, as well as research events and factors that contribute to a Gen-Z student’s experience, starting with a timeline.

Recording and Resources from Langdon Graves ’ Faculty Spotlight Presentation on Dec. 6, 2022

Mid-Year Report

Langdon Graves – Final Report

Gina Gregorio, School of Design

Gina Gregorio is an Adjunct Associate Professor in the Fashion Department, teaching the foundational Design and Materiality courses. She additionally has developed the core curriculum for the Textile Minor therein teaching the required minor courses Color Lab and Material Manipulation. Gina is the principle of her eponymous studio and for decades has worked with clients in both the fashion and interiors industry, in addition to creating installation based artwork and maintaining a painting practice. 

She is the Lead Designer for Lisa Miller Studio working with interior designers to develop high-end print collections, has designed over 20 textile collections for noted designer Gary Graham, and has served on the board at Textile Arts Center in Brooklyn. 

Within the last 3 years, Gina has co-developed a Textile Research Library in the Fashion Department and is the faculty lead for the Textile Dye Garden. Her approach to teaching textile design spans traditional studio practices to digital techniques, with a core focus on developing responsible design practices and preparing students to challenge and reform the existing structures of the damaged global system of textile manufacturing.

The Project

Gina’s Fellowship Project centers around expanding access and programming in the Textile Dye Garden. The intent is to create a multifaceted and multidisciplinary space for collaboration and education. Outreach to fellow faculty for proposals around writing, talks, meditation and making will help formulate a collective consciousness around usage with the garden as a cross-disciplinary community resource. 

Working with graduate student Ana Codorean to develop programming, we plan to open a channel between the larger Pratt Community and local residents, highlighting historical and contemporary Indigenous plant knowledge and solutions for minimizing the impact of textile dye processes. 

Irene Lopatovska, School of Information

Dr. Irene Lopatovska is an Associate Professor at the Pratt Institute School of Information. She worked as an information professional in government and corporate settings, and has taught at Pratt for 15 years. She earned her Ph.D. in Information Science (with a minor in Decision Making) at Rutgers School of Communication and Information. Her research and teaching interests revolve around humanistic research and understanding relationships between human information interaction and technology. Dr. Lopatovska’s research aims to represent the end-users’ voice in technology design recommendations. In recent years, she focused on users’ wellbeing during interactions with conversational agents, including Amazon Alexa, Apple Siri, and Google Assistant. She is a co-PI on the NSF funded project “Data Literacy with, for, and by Youth: Exploring How Teens Co-Design After-School Programs as Sites of Critical Data Practice”, led by Dr. Leanne Bowler. (https://sites.google.com/pratt.edu/data-activism-for-youth/home ).  Dr. Lopatovska uses collaborative methods in her research and teaching, and authored more than 50 publications, often with her students, in the areas of human-computer interaction (HCI) and conversational user interfaces (CUI). She is actively involved in professional service activities. Examples of her service to the Institute include chairing of the faculty development fund committee, School’s curriculum and peer-reviews committees. Her external service include two Fulbright Specialist awards, chairing of the Conference on Human Information Interaction and Retrieval (CHIIR), and others. The details of Dr. Lopatovska’s research, teaching and service activities can be found at her website:  https://irenelopatovska.wordpress.com/ 

Participatory Re-design of a Course 

In redesigning the course for my School, I am planning to test a new “participatory design” method for course development. Traditional process of course development is rooted in the instructor’s knowledge and assumptions about the field/profession/discipline. In addition to involving traditional secondary sources and my own expertise in developing the course, I will also INVOLVE STAKEHOLDERS, including but not limited to employers of our graduates, alums, current students, administrators and fellow instructors from other departments of the Institute who will drive the selection of topics, materials and assignments for the course.

The project idea stems from the current gap in the iSchool curriculum: absence of a management/leadership course (similar courses haven’t been offered in years). My initial project plan includes:

  • Market analysis: review of what’s offered by other iSchools and similar programs
  • Professional literature review in the areas of recent management and leadership practices (e.g. ethics and DEI best managerial practices)
  • Surveys of stakeholders (employers, employees, students etc) about their needs in the area of managerial knowledge
  • Interviews/conversations with instructors from other departments at and outside of Pratt who offer management courses

At the end of the project, I hope to have a re-designed course and test the methodology for participatory course development.

Recording and Resources from Irene Lopatovska ’s Faculty Spotlight Presentation on Oct. 18, 2022

Irene Lopatovska – Final Report

Eva Perez de Vega, School of Architecture 

Eva Perez de Vega is an architect, designer and educator. She holds a Masters and Bachelors degree in Architecture and Civil Engineering from the University of Madrid, School of Advanced Architecture (ETSAM), a Masters in Philosophy from the New School For Social Research, where she is currently a PhD candidate. Eva is a partner and co-founder of e+i studio, a New York City based architecture and design practice. Eva’s recent book Choreographing Space, published by Artifice Press, engages philosophical thought with architectural projects and speculative scenarios that offer an alternative, multi-species way of practicing architecture.

Eva is part of Pratt Faculty teaching architecture and design, and has almost 20 years experience teaching. She has previously taught at the University of Pennsylvania and Princeton School of Architecture, and also teaches at Parsons. Originally from Rome, Italy, she has been in New York City since 2001.

Design Studio for Climate Justice

Catastrophic climate change is the chief challenge we are facing today, and yet we are not addressing it with the urgency needed within Architectural education, despite the significant role architecture and related practices has played in nonhuman animal extinctions, loss of habitat and biodiversity through domination, domestication or forced adaptation. Architecture and human-built structures are embedded with speciesist practices of domination over the environment that are rooted in dualistic conceptions of the world that see humans as special and superior to other species. Human exceptionalism has driven architecture and the built environment to be conceived in opposition to ‘nature’ with the aim of excluding all other species from it. 

If we continue to give an inferior moral status to nature, and engage with speciesism the way we have up until now, there will be no rights for women, black or indigenous peoples, as the climate crisis results in the compounding of inequalities and exacerbation of the most dangerous forces of injustice. 

This way of intervening in the world is leading to the ethical and existential questions that must be posed given the global climate crisis. A reframing of human intervention as ‘built environment’ placed in opposition to the ‘natural environment’ of supposedly untouched and limitless nature, is urgently needed.

Framework Related to Pedagogy

As we return to in person learning and engage with physical model-making and printing, we also have an opportunity to not revert to business as usual, but rather have a new considered relationship with the planet’s resources we use to build models and communicate our built environment proposals.

During the CTL fellowship I would like to address ways in which we become more aware and accountable as faculty and students regarding the health of the materials we use for model-making or those we specify in our projects, and do so by tackling the full life of our proposals to take into account sourcing, waste, recycling, upcycling,

 Importantly, however, is extending those concerns to all forms of life, not just human-centric issues.

Many students are very interested in working more sustainably within model making and preparing their projects for reviews, but due to the lack of resources, knowledge, and support from faculty to tackle the issue, they often revert to thoughtless practices and use of harmful materials (such as blue foam, among others).

Questions that the Faculty Fellows’ proposal engages:

  • Can studio reviews open up a space for honest discussion on our role as architects within the climate crisis? Can we start by critically assessing the materials we use and specify?
  • Can we use materiality as a collaborative tool to address climate urgency and collective action within the architecture studio?
  • Can the outcome of the studio (the project, with its models and prints) be part of a bigger picture framework for rethinking our relationship with the environment affected by our design proposals?

Actions that my Fellows project could take on: 

  • Connect with the work done by the Pratt Sustainability Center and other departments  
  • Fostering student groups to recycle/ upcycle materials from models and printing
  • Connect to work done in Rethinking the Architecture Review and  “crit-the-crit”, to address how students prepare for reviews to expect a relationship of care rather than domination and power dynamics.

In architecture we are not really tackling the Ecological catastrophe, and the use of hazardous unhealthy materials for model-making in studio. If there is an awareness of unhealthiness it is always just for humans, but not for the many nonhuman lives we affect with the materials we use and specify in our projects. 

But there is student interest. Prior to the pandemic, I was in the conversation with some students regarding awareness of unhealthy materials, and having a system for recycling and upcycling materials for model making, as well as discussing how to hold us faculty accountable for the materials we tell our students to engage with.

In synthesis: What constitutes a design studio for climate justice?

Recording and Resources from Eva Perez de Vega’s Faculty Spotlight Presentation on Dec. 6, 2022

Mid-Year Report

Eva Perez de Vega – Final Report

Alex Schweder, School of Architecture

Alex Schweder lives and works in New York City, where he was born in 1970. Schweder coined the term ‘Performance Architecture’ to describe his contributions to architectural discourse that have been developed in spaces of exhibition including, Sensefactory at Muffithalle Munich, Slow Teleport at Casino Luxembourg, Your Turn at the Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art, The Newcomers in Performa17, Antarctopia at the 2014 Venice Biennale, Wall to Wall Floor To Ceiling at the Tel Aviv Art Museum, The Endless House at the Museum of Modern Art, Performance Architecture at the 2013 Moscow Biennial, The Real and Other Fictions at the 2013 Lisbon Architecture Biennial, Practise Architecture at Tate Britain, and A Sac of Rooms All Day Long at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. 

Financial supporters of his work include, Die Kulturstiftung des Bundes, The Pollack Krasner Foundation, and The Graham Foundation. Schweder has been an artist in residence at the Kohler Company, the Chinati Foundation, The American Academy in Rome as a 2005-6 Rome Prize Fellow in Architecture, and will be a Fellow at Civitella Ranieri in 2020. 

The New York Times, Artform, and Architectural Record are among the many periodicals to feature Schweder’s work. Historians such as RoseLee Goldberg and Juliet Rufford have theorized Schweder’s practice in Performance Now and Theater Architecture respectively. His writings have contributed to Performing Architectures (Andrew Filmer and Juliet Rufford eds.), Interiors Beyond Architecture (Amy Campos and Deborah Schneiderman eds.), and Log (Cynthia Davidson ed.).

Schweder pursued his undergraduate studies at Pratt Institute, graduate studies at Princeton University, and doctoral studies at Cambridge University. He has taught architecture, interior design, and industrial design at Pratt since 2012. Additionally he has taught at the Southern California Institute of Architecture, Der Akademie der Kunst in Vienna, the Architectural Association in London, and The Parson’s School of Design.

The Project

Within the framework of a CTL Fellowship in 2022, I will develop a methodology for critically engaging my own teaching practices. Specifically, I seek to further my pedagogy in courses I have developed over the last five-years that involve partnerships with non-profits around socially oriented topics. Under the umbrella of “Design for the Mind”, CaringKind and Pratt focused on Alzheimer’s from 2015 – 2017; The Judson Church, New Sanctuary Coalition, and Pratt addressed needs of people living in the US  without legal status; and from 2019 – 2021 the National Alliance on Mental Illness and Pratt worked to make the lives of those managing a mental health diagnosis more livable. For the next three semesters I will be working with the Partnership for Ending Addiction to explore how design can help cultivate those interpersonal relationships that support the management of addictions. 

Changing measurement a design’s viability away from aesthetic toward relational involves developing new metrics. This will be at the center of this new Methodology.

Mid Year Report

Recording and Resources from Alex Schweder’ Faculty Spotlight Presentation on Nov. 15, 2022

Alex Schweder – Final Report

Glenn Smulyan, School of Art

Glenn Smulyan is a licensed and board certified Creative Arts Therapist who has worked in LGBTQIA mental health services for many years before opening their private practice. Glenn’s approach to creative arts therapies is informed by their diverse clinical experiences, their commitment to harm reduction, sex positivity, trauma informed care and body liberation.

Glenn received their Masters Degree from Pratt Institute in Art Therapy and Creativity Development where they conducted their thesis research on Art Therapy as an Effective Tool to Communicate about Sex, Sexuality and Pleasure Among Sexually Marginalized individuals. Glenn is a professor at Pratt Institute and Marymount Manhattan College, clinical supervisor, and trains and consults around a variety of mental healthcare competencies including trauma informed/healing centered care, gender and sexuality, fat stigma and body liberation.

In addition to Glenn’s work as an art therapist they are a theater artist and puppet maker. Their puppet and theater work has been featured at lots of fancy places like St. Anne’s Warehouse, The Kennedy Center and Barbican but more often than not in the basement of a queer bar.

Glenn’s creative and performance work focuses on themes of body liberation, gender, fat, excavating our families and histories, and shifting cycles of trauma. It is Glenn’s goal that their work amplifies a voice in the world that is most often quieted, dampened, or disregarded. Amplified through performance and puppets Glenn’s is a voice that attempts honesty, humor, and vulnerability.

Creative Expression to Internalize Anti-Oppressive Frameworks and Organize Actionable Steps 

With the Center for Teaching and Learning fellowship, I propose a program of facilitated creative experientials for Pratt staff and faculty members looking for actionable ways to internalize and integrate anti-oppressive frameworks/DEI initiatives into their practice as educators. These experientials would incorporate visual arts and dance/movement derived from the traditions and modalities I have researched and used in my private practice and artistic collaborations, as well as taught in my role as a professor in the Pratt Creative Arts Therapy department over the last four years. 

In these four years as part of the Pratt faculty I have beared witness to and participated in a wide range of initiatives, professional trainings/dialogues, and interdepartmental efforts to better hone DEI values at Pratt on an institutional level and at the more micro level of individual classrooms and curriculums. As a professor, one of the courses I teach is “Cultural Competency,” a class explicitly focused on instilling future Pratt graduates and mental health practitioners with the tools needed for a lifelong commitment to growing as anti-oppressive clinicians. In this context I am privy to a unique level of transparency, discussion, and reflection from students about their experiences at Pratt, in Brooklyn, and the city at large as it relates to the urgent cultural dynamics, complexities, and harms named in CTL’s mission. As such, I see through both my own faculty position and relevant student feedback the ways that there is a block or rupture that occurs in the space between DEI trainings and initiatives, and what students actually experience in our classrooms. This is to say that much of our theoretical beliefs at Pratt have yet to be fully integrated into our curriculums, classroom spaces, faculty relationships, and in some ways our physical campus spaces. 

This CTL proposal does not stem from a place of impatience around the ways we still need to grow as a community of educators and learners. As a therapist I’m keenly aware that growth and change are hard, uncomfortable, and take both time and commitment. While we often wish growth and change could be swift, I believe that if we are truly committed, we need both patience and concrete tools to make our growth actionable, integrated, and sustainable. In this vein I propose the use of intentionally tailored therapeutic art directives to help us as staff/faculty learners integrate nuanced frameworks of justice, not just in our heads, but also in ways that are embodied and specific to us as individuals. 

In concrete terms, my facilitation/implementation of this proposal may include: 

  • Facilitating a multi-session group over the course of the year with the same cohort of interested staff/faculty to track pedagogical integration of DEI and CTL principles through use of group discussion, journal-keeping, goal-setting, and creative arts therapy experientials 
  • Collaborating to add visual art experientials to pre-existing DEI staff trainings as a tool for mind-body integration of the ideas presented
  • Potential collaboration with dance-movement therapists to add somatic art experientials to pre-existing DEI staff trainings as a tool for mind-body integration of the ideas presented

Recording and Resources from Glenn Smulyan ’s Faculty Spotlight Presentation on Oct. 18, 2022

Mid-Year Report

Final Report: Glenn Smulyan

Karyn Zieve, School of Liberal Arts and Sciences

Karyn Zieve is an Adjunct Assistant Professor in the Department of History of Art & Design. She teaches classes on a variety of topics including nineteenth-century European art and design, museum studies and interior design history as well as the first-year Themes in Art and Culture. She received her Ph.D. from the Institute of Fine Arts, NYU, writing her dissertation on Eugène Delacroix, Orientalism and Historicism. Her work on cross-cultural communications and miscommunications corresponds to her interest in co-curricular and interdisciplinary pedagogical work as well as her earlier curatorial museum work.

The Project

Collaboration is an increasingly popular term but what does it mean for students and teachers? How is it taught and practiced? What does it mean for a Pratt education and community? This fellowship explores these questions through a focus on three smaller pedagogical projects that seek ways to teach collaboration while depending on the collaboration of the community to be built. 

The three elements – an assignment, a course, and a program – allow collaboration to be explored at different levels. They each require students and faculty to investigate and hone collaboration skills, co-create course content and structure, and work across disciplines. Generated either by the History of Art and Design or School of Liberal Arts and Sciences, the endeavors draw on skills, knowledge and making that relate to, or occur, in various fields. Each of these will entail group work by faculty, students and staff and deeper inquiry into structure but will result in frameworks that faculty and students can easily implement in the future. 

This project hopes not only to honor the meaning and value of collaboration in education and community but also highlight that students knit together a more successful curricular fabric when they integrate various subjects, ideas and modalities and that part of that success is in making those interdisciplinary – and collaborative – relationships explicit and accessible.

Mid-year Report

Recording and Resources from Brian Brooks’ Faculty Spotlight Presentation on Nov. 15, 2022

Karyn Zieve – Final Report

2021 CTL Faculty Fellows

The 2021 CTL Faculty Fellows and their projects are listed below. Click here to watch recordings of each of their presentations at the Fellows Showcase!

James Lipovac, Foundation

James Lipovac is an Adjunct Professor with CCE, and Coordinator of Visualization/Representation in the Pratt Foundation Department. He is an interdisciplinary artist whose work has been exhibited both nationally and internationally. As an instructor, he is engaged in the researching of pedagogies that strengthen student’s metacognition, working on a Faculty Learning Committee (FLC) analyzing learning in the first year, co-chairing two panels on metacognition at the FATE conference, co-chair of the FoundationFOLIO assessment committee, and as a member of the All-Institute Learning Goals task force. James’ CTL Fellowship will draw on these experiences and inform the approach taken in exploring alternatives to traditional forms of evaluation in order to make students partners in their learning process.

The Project

This last year has had us reevaluate how we evaluate our students. With a focus on issues of access, inclusion, and a diversity of learning, this CTL Fellowship will explore gradeless methods of self, peer, and faculty assessment. Instead of student projects ending in evaluations examining how they measure up to the rest of the class, the Fellowship will design a framework that gives students agency in determining- along with the faculty- the importance of both course and department outcomes. This project will collect data and narrative statements from students to determine the efficacy of the gradeless assessments, and will involve working directly with Foundation Faculty to pilot gradeless assessments. The goal of this Fellowship will be to develop a structure for Foundation faculty to shift to a method of gradeless assessment.

Resources and Recording from Panel at the 2021 Fall Forum

Mid-Year Report: James Lipovac

Final Report: James Lipovac

Monica Maceli, School of Information

Dr. Monica Maceli is Associate Professor at Pratt Institute School of Information, focusing on emerging technologies in the information and library science domain. She earned her Ph.D. and MSIS from the College of Information Science and Technology (iSchool) at Drexel University. She has an industry background in web development and user experience, having held positions in e-commerce, online learning, and academic libraries.  Her research areas of interest include end-user development, human-computer interaction, and information technology education.  Dr. Maceli is co-director of the Environmental Sensing Lab at the Pratt Research Accelerator which explores the applications of micro-controllers, single-board computers, sensors, and other physical computing devices in monitoring environmental conditions within cultural heritage organizations.

Social and Ethical Issues in Computing 

The School of Information’s strategic plan includes an Ethics and Technology initiative, which seeks to imbue our students with the necessary reflective and critical skills to navigate today’s technical landscape. As I teach and conduct research in information technology topics, this project will leverage my skills to create a course on the ethical use of technology as a new elective for all our students at SI, as well as the larger Institute. This will both further our strategic school goals as well as introduce students to vital critical and ethical skills needed to design and employ technology in their future careers as information professionals.  The background research necessary in developing this course will also be published in a scholarly venue to reach a wider audience of library and information science educators, who may be in need of increasing coverage of these topics in their curriculum. 

Faculty Spotlight Presentation

Mid-year Report: Monica Maceli

Final Report: Monica Maceli

Leonel Ponce, School of Architecture

Leonel Lima Ponce, Registered Architect (NY), LEED GA, WEDG, is the Acting Academic Coordinator of Pratt Institute Graduate Center for Planning and the Environment’s MS in Sustainable Environmental Systems program. He is a founding member of resilient design collaborative Operation Resilient Living and Innovation Plus (ORLI+). Leonel focuses on fostering just partnerships for sustainable and resilient design, infrastructure, and development through community-based research, engagement and design strategies, locally and internationally – with an emphasis on his adopted home of New York City and his birth city of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

Building The Just Classroom: A Collaborative Resource Bank for Community-Based Environmental and Climate Justice Curriculum

Building upon the historic community-led, participatory action research work of the Graduate Center for Planning and the Environment, and faculty and initiatives within the School of Architecture and across Pratt Institute, this project will catalogue preferred practices for just relationship building and community engagement in Environmental and Climate Justice (EJ/CJ) courses and curricula, and propose a resource bank to share these academic and community practices. During the 2021 Fellowship year, the project will consist of (1) identification of previous and current Pratt community partnerships and climate change courses; (2) interviews and/or focus groups with faculty, students, and community partners to identify challenges and opportunities in this work; (3) research of additional existing pedagogical models centering community in processes and outcomes; (4) assessment and alignment of examples and tools with the Jemez Principles of Democratic Organizing and other guiding documents in the EJ/CJ movements; and (5) sharing of the work and recommendations with key community partners, within and beyond Pratt’s gates. The research can be accessed and applied to ongoing and emerging EJ/CJ projects, courses, and Strategic Plans at the School of Architecture and beyond, building towards sustainability and climate curricula that are approached in a just manner with community partners, students, and faculty.

Mid-year Report: Leonel Ponce

Tori Purcell, School of Art

Tori Purcell is Assistant Chair and Visiting Associate Professor in the Photography Department in the School of Art at Pratt Institute. She is a fine artist who works primarily in photography, video and installation and has exhibited her works nationally and internationally. As part of Tori’s CTL Fellowship, she will facilitate conversations around inclusive pedagogy and methodologies by engaging all players – students and teachers alike – in sharing perspectives, strategies and challenges as a means of expanding ways of knowing and experiencing. Through these conversations, Tori’s project goal is to create tangible practices that can be incorporated into the classroom.

Decentering the frame: expanded ways of knowing

Decentering the frame: expanded ways of knowing, is a research project that is part of the School of Art’s teaching and learning fellowship on inclusive pedagogy. The project aims to lead faculty towards building an antiracist curriculum by fostering inclusive classroom communities. The project will focus on both reimagining course content and diversifying modes of delivery of that content as a means of breaking down structural inequalities in the classroom as they pertain to race, class, gender, sexuality and other ways of being. The project will engage the department as a whole – faculty, staff, students, and administration – in collective conversations and sharing of ideas and experiences in order to cultivate a shared commitment and a variety of strategies to enhance learning and understanding.

Recording and Resources from Tori Purcell’s Faculty Spotlight Presentation on Dec. 6, 2021

Mid-year Report: Tori Purcell

Final Report: Tori Purcell

Irina Schneid, School of  Design

Irina Schneid, IIDA, AIA, is a licensed architect and Adjunct Assistant Professor of Interior Design. She is the Principal of Scharc Studio and the Founder and Design Director of Impact Wrkshp, a social impact organization for women in design. Deeply committed to expanding community outreach through her teaching and practice, Irina founded Impact Wrkshp as a springboard for design advocacy to help emerging design professionals harness their training towards social good. Irina’s CTL fellowship will look inward, at design pedagogy, to explore methodologies for supporting participatory design and community engagement within required coursework in the Department of Interior Design.

The Project

This fellowship project explores methodologies for integrating design advocacy into interior design pedagogy. Seeking to strengthen and support community engagement within required courses across the BFA and MFA curricula, my work will focus on building departmental awareness of participatory design processes which foster empathy, inclusion, collaboration, and outreach.  Asking, how might we activate the classroom as a platform for positive social change, this project will look inward into recent departmental community building initiatives as well as outward into institute-wide participatory design models at Pratt and at design schools across the country. A series of faculty panel discussions will showcase pedagogical strategies for teaching design justice, community-led design, and empathy-based design thinking. My research will catalogue these methodologies, among others, to support the writing and implementation of an advocacy-driven Program Learning Outcome (PLO) with the goal of fostering faculty dialogue about how we as a department can engage in community outreach at all levels of graduate and undergraduate interior design pedagogy.

Information about the Participatory Education DDC

Mid-year Report: Irina Schneid

Final Report: Irina Schneid

 

Nancy Smith, School of Information

Nancy Smith is an Assistant Professor in the School of Information, where she teaches in the Information Experience Design Program. Her primary research is focused on understanding the relationship between digital technologies and the environment, which includes work in sustainability, environmental justice, animal-computer interaction, and speculative design. She has a Ph.D. in Human-Computer Interaction from Indiana University.

ctl-fellow-design-justice

Rethinking UX Education from a Design Justice Perspective

During my fellowship year, I will work to develop initiatives that expand our approach to diversity, equity, and inclusion in the Information Experience Design (IxD) Program in the School of Information. Utilizing the Design Justice Network Principles as a guiding framework, I will conduct interviews with both faculty and students, as well as additional research around inclusion in design. I hope to clarify how these concepts are understood and represented in our program, as well as within the UX design field more broadly. Drawing on Pratt’s DEI Progress Report, I will explore current challenges the program faces and identify areas for improvement within the curriculum. This research will culminate in a toolkit that provides content and teaching resources for faculty to support design justice actions throughout the IxD program.

Mid-year Report: Nancy Smith

Final Report: Nancy Smith

 

Peter De Staebler, School of Liberal Arts

Peter De Staebler is assistant professor at Pratt Institute in the History of Art and Design Department. He is an art and architectural historian and classical archaeologist with more than 25 years of field experience in Turkey, Italy, and Greece. His research interests broadly include Greek and Roman art, architecture, and urban and material culture; materiality and experience of ancient production; and the connoisseurship, collection, interpretation, reception, and display of antiquity.

 

ReThinking the HAD Survey

My CTL Fellowship project considers the process of how to rethink and reimagine the two-semester Gen Ed core survey sequence offered by the History of Art and Design Department, “Themes in Art and Culture 1 and 2” (HAD 111-112). The course has existed in its current iteration for about 6 years; many aspects of the course are prized by the department and appreciated by students, while others have hindered innovation as the department’s position with Pratt has changed and our world has evolved. The department wants to keep the courses’ shared content (approximately 32-34 sections per semester, taught aby about 18-20 faculty), including its broad chronological and geographic coverage of world cultures from prehistoric up through the recent past. The idea here is to consider how the courses could better express a Pratt identity. These could include better integration with other aspects of the core within SLAS and also with Foundations and other schools, including skills, learning objectives and projects; how the global approach could be more fully realized; how art and design could be more consciously intertwined; what the course would look like if we created our own shared instructor resources and no longer relied on an outside textbook. These conversations have had beginnings, and to be answered and implemented any changes require invested faculty buy-in. Rather than to impose a new survey course or core resources, the goal is to rebuild from within. This project looks to be a context to think about and discuss the process or and its ramifications, and to plan with stakeholders how to build a collective interest in the new course.

Mid-year report: Peter De Staebler

 

2019-2020 Faculty Fellows

ComD Teachers Project

The COMD Teachers Project is a discussion based, participant led project which focuses on dialogue surrounding decolonization of the design classroom through the lens of the power and authority of the instructor. The outcomes of the discussions will lead to the COMD pedagogy focused imprint in the Spring/Summer.

Update: The first issue of the Teachers Project: Criticism on Design Pedagogy: On The Redistribution of Power, designed by Preston Thompson, Visiting Assistant Professor, UG CommD, is launching at Printed Matter Virtual Art Book Fair.

The CTL Faculty Fellow behind the project

Nida Abdullah is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Undergraduate Communications at Pratt Institute. Referencing critical and radical pedagogy as well as analyzing “canon”, her research interests focus on the conditions and circumstance for design and design pedagogy, as well as disrupting hierarchical and hegemonic modes of production. Nida has developed several art and design workshops, installations and shows analyzing and reflecting upon the conventions in art and design practice, through the overlapping lenses of power, bias and representation, and non/ownership. Nida’s CTL Faculty Fellowship will regularly bring together interested faculty from Undergraduate and Graduate CommD community to discuss teaching and design pedagogy.

Pivot Point in Design Pedagogy

Matthew will explore design as a tool to test new materials, processes and applications. We are in the midst of a paradigm shift and at a pivot point in product design and industrial design pedagogy. This project will explore this pivot point through faculty collaborations, conversations, research, explorations of new curriculum and pedagogical strategies, with a goal of helping students become agents of change by translating emerging technologies into the useful and desirable objects of tomorrow.

The CTL Faculty Fellow behind the project

Matthew Hoey is an Industrial Designer/Architect and a Visiting Assistant Professor in Industrial Design at Pratt Institute. Matthew approaches teaching and learning from a phenomenological perspective and focuses on exploring new ways of production using digital technologies. Matthew’s CTL Fellowship will explore additive manufacturing as a field of study. Additive manufacturing (AM) offers minimal waste to product in a circular economy. It’s the closest manufacturing process we have to the way Nature makes things – life builds to shape – AM allows for the expression of forms that would be otherwise impossible to physically create. www.studiocamden.com

Expanding the Frame

EXPANDING THE FRAME: Inclusive Pedagogy and Community Building on the Departmental Level. The faculty, staff and students of Pratt’s Film/Video department are engaged in a conversation about how we can improve student learning in our department by incorporating intercultural pedagogy across the curriculum in small manageable ways. Working together we will research best practices and develop and implement strategies on multiple levels that could impact student learning in positive ways. The project is a work in progress and we intend to implement as many strategies as possible to see what works and what doesn’t.

The CTL Faculty Fellow behind the project

Kara Hearn is Acting Chairperson and a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Film/Video Department in the School of Art at Pratt Institute. She is an is an interdisciplinary video artist whose work has been screened, exhibited, and performed nationally and internationally. As part of Kara’s CTL Fellowship, she will help facilitate a deeper conversation in the Film/Video Department about inclusive teaching practices that can improve student learning. She will act as a liaison between students, faculty, staff, and the CTL by sharing ideas, resources and information.

Reviewing Digital

Jonathan’s Fellowship focuses on developing new pedagogical models for the Digital Crit, as a live format for meaningful conversation between student and faculty surrounding a developing information model. The research looks to side step the frequent question of ‘why are you showing me your rhino model,’ in light of a new question of ‘how can we both get explore your digital model together.’

The CTL Faculty Fellow behind the project

Jonathan Scelsa is an Assistant Professor at Pratt’s Undergraduate Architecture. He is a licensed architect and partner in the cross-disciplinary practice op.AL. Scelsa’s design research explores the computational methods associated with the geometric legacy of optical mechanics in architecture. Scelsa’s design work has been supported by the New York State Council of the Arts, the Architectural League of New York, and the American Academy in Rome as the recipient of the Mark Hampton Rome Prize in Design. Jonathan’s CTL Fellowship will focus on the inquiry of how can we use the classroom as a digital review environment to prepare the next generation of students to both produce and present information in the virtual realm for future oriented practice. He will work to establish the range of practices and methods available within the school of architecture for the digital crit + workshop, and will hold a colloquium and workshop series to proliferate that information into the school’s population.

Integrating Science and Design Pedagogy

Chris’ project will make connections between how the natural sciences are currently taught at Pratt, what our students need from their natural science education, and the kinds of design education that our students experience. Fostering conversations and sharing what he has learned through interviews with faculty and students, Chris hopes to enrich the Math & Science curriculum and the overall teaching approach of the Math & Science department. This project will foster integration between science teaching and the design fields at Pratt.

The CTL Faculty Fellow behind the project

Christopher X Jon Jensen is an educator, writer, and scientist with interests in pedagogy, cooperation, human cultural evolution, and sustainability. He is an Associate Professor of Ecology & Evolution at Pratt Institute. Chris’ CTL Fellowship will focus on making connections between how the natural sciences are currently taught at Pratt, what our students need from their natural science education, and existing research on best practices for fostering natural science learning. Chris will be fostering conversations and sharing what he has learned in order to enrich the Math & Science curriculum and the overall teaching approach of his department, creating stronger connections between science teaching and the rest of the Pratt education.

Recent posts about Faculty Fellows:

Resources – Faculty Spotlight: Unlearning Classroom Space

Unlearning Classroom Space: Swati Piparsania’s (School of Design) Fellows project examines, through surveys and deep reading of texts, what are good environments of learning and how changing aspects can promote creativity. Watch the recording here, as Swati shares initial findings and talks about what else is in store for her 2023 Fellows’ project.

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November 7, 2023 No Comments