In order to support its faculty and students pursuing innovative, interdisciplinary research, the Lamar Dodd School of Art offers funding for travel research. Twice yearly, the Dodd solicits and reviews applications for travel support to conferences, exhibitions, and symposia, both domestic and international. Recently, two faculty members, John Swindler and James Enos, along with two Art Education graduate students, Diane Lee and Kihyun Nam, were awarded travel funding.

During October James Enos traveled to Chattanooga, Tennessee to preside as the co-chair of a panel on systems practice called RE(:)Thinking Space. The panel drew upon papers and presentations that explore and rethink the role of space in art. The panel was based upon Eno’s research alongside the research of co-chair Jeremy Culler (University of South Carolina, Aiken). The panel covered a wide range of topics regarding special issues such as spatial simulations and the role of space in facilitating participatory experience. Enos also presented Integrating Network Methodologies as a frame for thinking about how artist-educators build institutional and cultural forms of contextualization beyond the tenants of art school.

SECAC is a national non-profit organization devoted to education and research in the visual arts. SECAC provides advocacy and support for arts professionals and engenders opportunities for the exchange of scholarship and creative activities through an annual conference and publications. Through their annual fall conference, the conference provides members with a forum for the exchange of ideas and concerns relevant to the practice and study of art.

Ph.D. Candidate in Art Education Jhih-yin “Diane” Lee was recently awarded a Research Travel Grant for Graduate Students. In mid-October, Diane used this funding to present her dissertation research at the 2019 ISSOTL Conference in Atlanta, Georgia. ISSOTL, the International Society for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, is an association serving faculty members, staff, and students all over the world who care about teaching and learning in higher education as serious intellectual work. The conference theme this year was SoTL without Borders: Engaged Practice for Social Change. At the conference, Diane presented the research design of her dissertation which examines her online teaching practice driven by critical pedagogy and social justice art education.

Diane’s qualitative Internet research seeks to understand how her visual arts course students collaboratively experience, make meaning of, and reflect on their participation in an online art activism project as part of the course requirement. Although a considerable amount of art education studies have been conducted to examine the use of the Internet to facilitate art teaching, the literature of treating social media as a site for art activism as social justice art education remains limited. By a thorough examination of and self-reflexivity in her practice, findings from her study will allow for a transferrable knowledge of the online art activism experience and potentially help improve future instructional design for social justice art education online.