Art Ed faculty recognized at NAEA conference

Congratulations to Art Education faculty members Aaron Knochel, who won the Eastern Region Higher Education Art Educator Award at the National Art Education Association (NAEA) annual conference, held in Boston in March, and Michelle Bae-Dimitriadis, who delivered the Grace Hampton Lecture at the conference.†

Knochel's recent projects include a collaboration with Yasmine Abbas, Penn State assistant teaching professor of architecture and engineering design, for MADE 2019 (http://sites.psu.edu/made2019/), a one-day symposium for Penn State faculty and students that focuses on a transdisciplinary exploration of art and design practice through the senses, and the Spacemakers project in Philadelphia, which examines neighborhood identity, public pedagogy, and social justice issues related to living in the city. He also won the 2018 PAEA Outstanding Higher Education Art Educator Award.

"Art educators rely on one another for revitalizing their practice and energizing their pedagogy, so to be†recognized on a national level†by a dedicated community that I serve in the National Art Education Association is an honor," said Knochel. "It is also a testament to the rich arts community we have here at Penn State, where my research and creative scholarship has grown tremendously through the dynamic†School of Visual Arts†faculty that inspire me and the amazing art education students I have the privilege to work with everyday."††

Bae-Dimitriadis was selected to give the Grace Hampton Lecture because of her efforts to bring criticality to art education and culture to the forefront of the discourse. The lecture series was established by the NAEA Committee on Minority Concerns in 2012 as a tribute to Dr. Hampton?s courageous leadership and involvement in the fields of art and art education.†Hampton is a professor emerita at Penn State.

Bae-Dimitriadis' research and writing is on art and media cultural production of minoritized girls. Her current research has been on Karen-Burmese refugee girls' counter-cartography through creating their own mobile oral stories in relation to the land in Western New York, concerning history, environmental racial justice, and geography. Recent honors include the 2017-18†E.O. Smith Arts and Humanities Faculty Development Research Grant from SUNY Buffalo State, where she previously served on the faculty, and a 2018-19 National Art Education Foundation (NAEF) Research Grant.

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