April 29, 2020
We would like to congratulate four professors in the School of Visual Art and Design for receiving 2020 Faculty Awards from the Office of the Provost and the College of Arts and Sciences.
Dr. Minuette Floyd, Professor of Art Education, is the recipient of the 2020 UofSC Educational Foundation Outstanding Service Award! For more than two decades Dr. Minuette Floyd has been a leading voice in the field of art education in the state of South Carolina and the nation. She has provided deeply important state and nation-wide leadership to address diversity and inclusion in K-12 arts education through her action-based research and teaching. Minuette has conducted dozens of workshops and seminars for art educators to introduce them to racially diverse artists and methods for designing a culturally sensitive arts curriculum for public school settings. As Co-Investigator on a large 3-year National Endowment for Humanities grant project, America’s Reconstruction: The Untold Story, she taught summer workshops for teachers from various disciplines that focused on the history of South Carolina Lowcountry arts and culture during the post-slavery Reconstruction Era.
Minuette’s leadership profile is expansive and includes a sustained commitment to the Young Artists Workshop (YAW), hosted in McMaster each semester. YAW is a community-based art education opportunity for young artists who are in elementary, middle and high school. YAW students receive 8 weeks of hands-on art instruction in the classrooms and studios of UofSC’s School of Visual Art and Design.
Dr. Anna Swartwood House, Assistant Professor of Art History, is a recipient of this year’s Undergraduate Mungo Teaching Award! Dr. House has demonstrated a commitment to excellent teaching through development of new courses in Art History, unique applications of technology to learning, supervision of students in undergraduate research in the fields of Art History and digital humanities, and community engagement activities that involve her students in the Columbia community and professional art and culture fields. The student who nominated Dr. House cites her unwavering support as a mentor and her ability to motivate, guide and encourage multidisciplinary undergraduate research.
Professor Mary Robinson (Studio Art - Printmaking) is also a recipient of this year’s Undergraduate Mungo Teaching Award! Students from all of SVAD’s majors seek to learn from Professor Robinson across a wide range of printmaking courses. She fosters a distinct identity and strong sense of community in the printmaking studios that students have actively sought for more than 18 years. Prof. Robinson’s students learn within and beyond the classroom in ways that truly demonstrate integrative and experiential learning. Notable examples include her students’ collaborations with the Columbia Museum of Art. In 2011 and 2015 Robinson’s students exhibited their work alongside two notable exhibitions: Japanese printmaker Haruka Furusaki; and in the Identity exhibition, alongside the Andy Warhol Pop Art show. Prof. Robinson has also supported her students to mount stand-alone exhibitions at the CMA (Ink, Paper, Blood, Sweat, Tears in 2011) and worked consistently with the Ink and Paper Student Club over many years as their Faculty Advisor.
She believes that through teaching, learning, mentoring, and setting an example as a practicing artist, she encourages students to view themselves as artists and citizens of a broader community locally and globally. Additionally, she provides her students with the opportunity to recognize what is effective in their own work as well as the work of others and how to improve.
Senior Instructor Jennifer Tarr (Media Arts) is recipient of a College of Arts and Sciences Undergraduate Teaching Award for non-tenure track faculty! This new, College-level award recognizes the teaching innovation of our non-tenure track teaching faculty.
For more than a decade, Prof. Tarr’s expertise and innovation in media arts pedagogy has been instrumental to the advancement and effectiveness of the School of Visual Art and Design’s Media Arts program, where she teaches across foundational, 100 seat production courses (that she developed and innovated) to senior-level genre courses in narrative and experimental filmmaking and media installation.
A student who supported Prof. Tarr’s nomination says it best: “She is a crucial part of every media arts student’s growth as a student and as an artist. Her teaching style is one of the most uplifting and enjoyable that I have experienced in all of my college career…. she continuously encourages students to push themselves to make the best artwork that they can. She does an amazing job at understanding how to work with each individual student, knowing when to praise them and when to nudge them forward. She introduced me to new forms of filmmaking that I had not considered, and she gave me a desire to keep coming to class to learn more about them. Her love for what she teaches is contagious, and it helped me and countless other students gain a finer appreciation for the art of filmmaking…. She has helped an enormous amount of students find confidence in themselves and prepare for a future in a very difficult field. I believe she deserves to be recognized for this, and I doubt there is a single student who would disagree."
Congratulations to our outstanding professors!