Diversity/Equity/Inclusion

Dear Art Students and Members of the OSU Community,

Greetings! This site is one of continual work, that documents the efforts by faculty, students, and staff to further Diversity Equity, and Inclusion within the Department of Art at OSU. It is our intention to update this page every semester. This page of past, current, and upcoming DEI Work is by far not comprehensive and has been compiled with the assistance of professors across the Department of Art.  While the Department of Art does have a DEI Committee, we recognize that DEI in the Department of Art is not just a committee, it’s a community effort across the Department and the University. As faculty, we are grateful for the University’s dynamic support for DEI, Social Justice & Community Engagement work. We are excited to share our work with you and invite undergraduates and graduate students, as well as all faculty and staff to contribute to this page. 

Recent work and initiatives include support from the University to hire new faculty including Assistant Professors, Visiting Assistant Professors, and Post-MFA Lecturer positions whose work activates diverse perspectives and experiences including but not limited to art’s intersections with issues of race, gender, citizenship, personhood, the environment, and land. 

The Fergus Diversity Scholarship for incoming undergraduate freshman students was founded last year, 2021. The DEI Committee interviews incoming freshmen undergraduates annually. “The Scholarship is open to incoming undergraduate students from urban or rural high schools who have had limited access to formal art training or are otherwise from underrepresented backgrounds in the arts, including first-generation college students. This financial support will serve as a recognition of talent and promise in the Department of Art.” 

Dr. Shadia Siliman, an Instructional Consultant from the Drake Institute, has led several workshops on intersectional identity, privilege, the art of calling in, inclusive pedagogy, the uniqueness of the art critique, and teaching art. Dr. Siliman will be returning to the Department to continue working with faculty on methods of critique, and the uniqueness of teaching art. Upcoming faculty workshop topics with Dr. Siliman and faculty include race and gender, with a focus on LGBTQI experiences and issues. Dr. Siliman is also available to work with MFA graduate students, based on MFA graduate student input.  

Two faculty from the department are now qualified to teach for the Inside/Out Ohio Prison Education Exchange Project (OPEEP) at the Ohio Reformatory Prison in Marysville.  OPEEP is a collaboration between OSU students and incarcerated people. Department of Art Professors Dani ReStack and Carmen Winant will begin teaching Drawing as Feminist Art in Autumn 2022. The course objectives include building relationships with one another in service of expanding worldview and lived experience, becoming exposed to various, wide-ranging feminist art practices and modalities and experimenting with the processes of drawing across method and technique. 

 

Again, this page is by far not comprehensive. As faculty, we are grateful for the University’s robust and dynamic support for DEI work. We are excited to share our work with you and invite you to work with us if the opportunity may arise.