Dean's Profile – BSC
Leading by building on ‘the bass line’
A profile of Arts and Architecture Dean B. Stephen Carpenter II
By Leon Valsechi
On a vibrant fall afternoon in Penn State’s Arts District, B. Stephen Carpenter II, Michael J. and Aimee Rusinko Kakos Dean in the College of Arts and Architecture, lightly gripped the neck of an imaginary upright jazz bass and slowly walked the bass line as he described his role as dean.
Charles Mingus’s “II B.S,” a smoky jazz tune that begins with simple bass notes, played on a speaker. As other instruments joined the rhythm one by one and the piece began to grow, Carpenter joyously smiled.
“Here comes the School of Theatre.”
“And here comes Architecture.”
“Now, visual arts get added into the mix.”
“The School of Music joins in.”
As the sound of the tune blossomed, Carpenter, a sharp-dressed, middle-aged African American man with a tightly groomed goatee and, of course, his signature fedora, analogized the music to his role as dean.
“Like a bass player in a jazz ensemble, I’m just a part of the College of Arts and Architecture,” Carpenter said. “It is a profound honor and privilege to be dean and to set the tone for our college, which is filled with extraordinary people doing incredible things.”
During his first five years at the helm, Carpenter managed to keep the beat through a global pandemic, and on the other end has pushed the college forward by empowering those around him to explore, create and learn.
The college is home to the School of Theatre, School of Music, School of Visual Arts, Department of Art History, Integrative Arts program and the Stuckeman School, which includes the departments of Architecture, Landscape Architecture and Graphic Design. Collectively, the college offers 19 undergraduate degree programs, 18 graduate degree programs, 16 minor and certificate programs, and numerous World Campus courses.
The college is also the home of the Palmer Museum of Art, the Center for the Performing Arts and the Penn State Blue Band.
Maintaining a harmonious balance is no easy task, Carpenter admitted, but just as he did on day one of his tenure, he approaches the job with a simple mantra.
“Our college is a place where we make possibilities possible.”
Setting the Foundation
In arts and design disciplines, the possibilities through creative activity, and other forms of research, are endless. It’s a concept that exists at the core of who Carpenter is. The visual artist who became an art educator and ultimately a higher education administrator can’t recall a time when creativity wasn’t at the center of his life.
As a young boy growing up in Boyds, Maryland, just north of Washington, D.C., he often pulled open a large buffet drawer in the family home’s dining room that was filled with Legos and built whatever he could dream. Hours would go by, he said. The creative urge often extended outside, where he and his three younger brothers used the rural landscape as a playground for their imaginations.
When he was in sixth grade, Carpenter’s parents asked what he wanted for his birthday. The answer became emblematic of a life as a creator.
“I want a pen and ink set with sepia ink and good paper,” Carpenter said to his mom and dad. “I don't think a lot of kids ask for that as their birthday present, but making things has always been central to who I am.”
Drawing segued into ceramics in high school, which eventually became his main art medium. While an undergraduate at Slippery Rock University in the mid-80s, he was asked by his professor and mentor Richard Wukich to teach a lesson in an introductory ceramics course and, as Carpenter explained, something clicked.
“I wasn't quite sure what it was, but he saw something there,” Carpenter said. “He said, ‘you're a pretty good teacher, you might want to consider art education.’”
He did just that, and when looking around at graduate schools, Penn State struck a chord. He first came to Penn State in the late 80s and earned a master of education in art education.
From there, he briefly returned to his Maryland hometown to teach art in the local school district. He went back to Penn State in 1991 to pursue a doctor of philosophy degree in art education in the School of Visual Arts and stayed until 1995, when he was hired as assistant professor of art and art education at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia.
Over the next 15 years, he climbed the art education academic ranks at Virginia Commonwealth University and Texas A&M University. During that span, he published dozens of peer-reviewed journal articles and book chapters and authored or co-authored four books on art education and curriculum.
He returned to Penn State in 2011 to serve as a member of the faculty in the School of Visual Arts and was later appointed professor-in-charge of the Art Education program.
In September of that same year, he started the Reservoir Studio on campus, which combined his passion for ceramics with his desire to practice socially engaged art. The space in the Arts Cottage invited community members to learn the process of creating ceramic water filters while highlighting access to clean water as a human right.
“Participatory art practices bring communities together,” Carpenter said. “In that studio were people from any number of disciplines working together to explore a solution to a global problem – that’s the essence of Penn State.”
He continued to pursue socially engaged art and education as the Ida Ely Rubin Artist-in-Residence at the MIT Center for Art, Science and Technology during a 2017–18 sabbatical. When he returned to Penn State, he was appointed interim director of the School of Visual Arts, where he remained until he was named dean as the result of a national search.
New Dean, Unexpected Challenges
About halfway through the spring 2020 semester, Carpenter had been dean for just two months. Unpacked boxes still sat on his office floor when he got the call informing him that due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Penn State was suspending in-person learning.
“The job I barely knew, just fundamentally changed,” Carpenter said.
The challenges were quickly apparent, and setting in was the reality that educating students in arts and design during a pandemic was going to be almost impossible through conventional modes. Each discipline presented new questions. How can an ensemble or choir perform on Zoom? How can ceramics artists kiln-fire their work? How can musical theatre students choreograph their numbers? The questions rolled in for weeks, and the answers weren’t easily formulated.
“I don't think I would have learned or gained as deep of an understanding as quickly about the differences within our schools and departments had it not been for COVID,” Carpenter said.
Carpenter leaned on those around him. The needs were diverse, but throughout the pandemic he said the creative and collaborative spirit in the college helped guide the way through his first two years on the job. The pandemic also helped him to forge deeper connections with his colleagues across the college.
“I started to ask people in the beginning of every Zoom meeting, ‘how are you doing?’” Carpenter said. “And I wasn’t letting them get by with saying, ‘I'm good, how are you?’ No, we opened up.”
That empathetic and honest approach, he said, has helped him to navigate other challenges that are unique to a dean in an arts and design college – one of them being the narrative that a degree in the arts lacks value.
“There's something about our society and our culture that positions the arts in a way that makes it seem like you need to have a fallback if you're going to study art,” Carpenter said. “That’s simply not true.”
A statistic Carpenter often cites is that just one in three college graduates of any degree end up in a career directly associated with their degree. The point is, he said, if you’re driven, you can succeed in many different fields.
When meeting with parents and family members of prospective students, Carpenter occasionally is asked about the financial sustainability of a degree in the arts. He’s quick to point out to those parents that an artist designed the clothes they wear, and wrote, recorded and performed the music they listen to. The entertainment industry alone is made up of artists and designers from all disciplines, he explained.
“The impact and work of artists and designers surround us in our everyday lives,” Carpenter said. “So, when a parent asks me what their kid is going to do with a degree in the arts, my answer is, whatever they can imagine.”
The Signature, Symbolic Hat
Throughout his career in academia, whether it was as a visual artist, a student, an art educator or a college administrator, one constant has been Carpenter’s signature hats.
Hanging on top of a coat rack in his office are hats of various styles, but it’s the fedora that he wears most often. It has been the go-to choice since he was urged by friends at Slippery Rock to wear one when he was elected to homecoming court, but on a deeper level it is also a nod to his paternal grandfather’s indelible crisp hats.
A hat similar to the one his grandfather often wore can be seen in Elliot Erwitt’s famous photo “Segregated Water Fountain,” which Carpenter said has been deeply meaningful to him.
The black and white photo shot in North Carolina in 1950 depicts side-by-side water fountains with a sign above the left that reads “White” and the other “Colored.” In the photo, a Black man wearing a fedora is bending over to drink from the unkempt, rudimentary “Colored” water fountain as the “White” pristine fountain stands unused as a symbol of segregation.
“Part of the reason I wear the hats is because of that moment in history,” Carpenter said. “If it wasn't for people at that time, some wearing hats just like that and taking some chances, being courageous and imagining possibilities that should be possible, I wouldn't be sitting here.”
The same photo served as inspiration for one of Carpenter’s creative projects, “Double Water Fountains,” an ongoing participatory and public pedagogy project in which Carpenter invites a stranger to use his cell phone to take a photo of him drinking from dual fountains. He shares the photo with the stranger who just snapped it and then juxtaposes it with Erwitt’s.
“The dialogue can be not only rewarding, but also complex and challenging,” Carpenter said. “It is a project that allowed me to stay connected to my creative practice while engaging with people on a deeply important issue.”
The Possibilities
When Carpenter steps onto campus each day, he said he is constantly reminded that the College of Arts and Architecture at Penn State is a unique and special place.
“This a place where we make amazing things happen,” Carpenter said. “It’s a place where people are always saying, ‘let’s attempt something not knowing if it's going to work out. Let’s gather as much information as we can… let’s explore, create and learn.”
As a visual artist and art educator, Carpenter said his accomplishments are rooted in the idea of exploring creative possibilities while engaging with those around him. His research and creative practice often cross disciplines and explore various areas of inquiry.
Regardless of what project he is working on, Carpenter said fostering the spirit of creativity has always been at the core of his work. Now, as dean, he pours that creative energy into finding new ways to empower everyone in the college to succeed in their roles and to grow as people.
“As an art educator, I felt like I was doing as much as I could, not as much as could be done, but as much as I could to advocate and promote the value of art education,” Carpenter said. “As dean, I realized the power of giving that energy to music, theatre, art history, architecture and all of our disciplines. There are multiple ways to learn and make sense of the world through art – when we add the ‘s’, it just opens numerous other possibilities.”
To highlight those possibilities and share them with the world outside of the Penn State Arts District, Carpenter has focused on supporting and celebrating the research and creative activity of the college’s internationally recognized community of artists, performers, researchers, designers, historians, curators and educators.
Whether it is through efforts to promote the college’s research publication called “Insight/Incite,” empowering the college’s Arts and Design Research Incubator (ADRI) and Center for Pedagogy in Arts and Design (C-PAD), or simply offering support to other projects around the college, Carpenter said he strives to promote a culture that produces new knowledge.
“The core of the word ‘research’ is ‘search.’ To look, to have intentions. You know something's out there, you're looking for it. But, to research means to look again. It's already been sought after, but let’s search again, perhaps through a different lens,” Carpenter explained. “That's creative activity. That’s research. That's what we do at Penn State. We provoke reflection in order to discover something in the process.”
The depth of discovery, like a harmonious jazz chord, is the product of progress. As Carpenter “played” the final notes of the Mingus tune, he looked out his window at the Arts District, clearly thinking about the future.
“Often the place you end up, or maybe even the place you need to be, is not where you initially intended or imagined. That's usually the case when you're making art or when you’re designing something by yourself,” Carpenter said. “But when you’re part of a group, you're not making the work for them, rather, you're experiencing the process of making with them.”
“That’s when the possibilities become possible.”