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MAT800: The Artist as Educator
MAT800: The Artist as Educator
MAT800: The Artist as Educator
MAT800: The Artist as Educator
PBAE Graduates explore the tools they will need to keep their artistry alive. They also learn how to digitize evidence of artistic and teaching performance. During the independent study, online course, or BFA studio course-audit experience, PBAE Graduates explore key personal dispositions of the artist-educator, personal identity, and unique self-qualities, and they articulate how these qualities shape their lives as artists and creative educators. During their studio practice exploration (audit, cohort, or independent), PBAE Graduates develop and expand on studio art practices as they continue to explore the artist/educator theme. By examining personal learning goals, they select an art form to study that either supplements or expands their existing repertoire. PBAE Graduates create a digital art collection either for an exhibit or in preparation for the digital portfolio of at least TWO completed works, and prepare a final reflection that examines the strengths and challenges of maintaining high-quality teaching while continuing to work as practicing artists.
Our Faculty
Our Faculty
Dr. Rachel Somerville, MAT Department Chair
Dr. Rachel Somerville
Dr. Rachel Somerville
As Department Chair of the MAT Program, Rachel is responsible for ensuring the course requirements are met regardless of modality in which courses are being taught. She is also the primary instructor for courses in the Program, including the Independent Study options for our high-flex programming.
“I believe the Art classroom should provide a learning environment that values cultural and social differences, recognizes multiple learning styles, and encourages critical thinking. Visual Arts education is much more than making things. In the Art classroom, students learn to develop and creatively express their ideas, solve problems, and make meaning. In studying a subject that is fluid and open to interpretation, students are challenged to examine their own perspectives, to question ideas, and to successfully respond to the visual culture in which they live.”
Dr. Somerville’s approach to teaching emphasizes collaboration, creativity, and student voice. Through her experience as a teacher and administrator in K-12 settings, she believes that quality art programming in the visual arts should be provided by art specialists and supported by school leaders, classroom teachers, with arts organizations and community programs. She feels that this partnered instruction serves to enhance a collaborative and an authentic approach to learning.
Rachel Somerville holds a doctorate in educational leadership from the University of California, Davis. Her doctoral work centered on research that bridges the divide among innovation, community, and education, studying makerspaces within formal education and examining teachers as early implementers of this movement and the academic conditions that foster creativity.
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