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GETTING TO KNOW – Union College professor Lorraine Cox is rethinking higher education one class at a time.
With over 20 years as a professor and higher education administrator, Cox has an extensive list of career accomplishments. She currently serves as an associate professor of Art History, chair of the Visual Arts department and co-director of Digital Media Studies.
This past academic year, the Niskayuna resident was also awarded Union’s Volunteer of the Year award for community engagement, an honor that is unsurprising given her campus contributions through the past couple of decades. In 2014, she began directing the school’s Faculty Development Program — a brand new initiative at the time. She is also a co-founder of the Union Coalition for Inclusiveness and Diversity, an organization that aims to create a supportive environment for students, faculty and staff.
But Cox’s higher education legacy also stems from her classes. Rather than the typical lecture or seminar format, Cox’s classes — The Business of Visual Art & Contemporary Entrepreneurship, Creative Placemaking and the Social Impact of Art and Environmentalism & Globalization in Contemporary Art — utilize team-based and field learning to engage with themes of social justice, build entrepreneurial skills and foster curiosity, creativity and collaboration.
She regularly takes students off-campus to work with Schenectady businesses and non-profit organizations — the YWCA NorthEastern NY, Electric City Barn and the Schenectady Inner City Ministry, to name a few — to understand the community’s needs, dive into the real world issues of race, gender and class and build a connection between Union College and the surrounding city.
The Gazette caught up with Cox to talk about her role as a professor and her experience running such innovative classes.
Q: When did you begin to include social justice and advocacy in your career?
A: Being mixed — I’m Latina — I always think of myself as a hybrid. I feel like I’ve navigated these different worlds, so I saw firsthand how race is played out on the macro and the micro. Seeing that growing up from my own family, good or bad, these are the things you hear, you experience.
And then I went to school in Virginia and that was an eye opener in terms of looking at racial dynamics back in the late 80s, 90s, and I was horrified by the racism I saw there. But I look white so I could see that black folks don’t trust white folks because this environment is so hostile. So being in the south — seeing it from that perspective and seeing it in the context — that’s what really got me more interested in art that addresses race and gender.
Q: When did you realize that you wanted to run your courses in this highly engaging, team-based format where students can, essentially, get out into the field and work with real people on real issues?
A: It started with the Business of Visual Art class in 2010 — that’s when I began thinking about this idea of an entrepreneurial mindset. People back then were thinking about Mark Zuckerberg. But now, people see that no one is an entrepreneur in a box. So that got me thinking about how you need to be resourceful and collaborate. By 2014, with my environmentalism class, I was like, I don’t want to just talk to the students and show them the art. I want them to learn from doing. I want them to see how creative practices can be game-changers around environmental issues.
I also have students coming in who are learning about the environment from the engineering side, or social policy or political policy. The more I can create a space where there are a lot of entry points for interdisciplinary interests the better. The peer-to-peer learning is another thing that feels so important.
So, 2014 was when I started doing this team-based learning and then I guess it was five years ago that I started doing team-based projects.
For this next course — Creative Placemaking and Social Impact of Art — as I was doing more and more field trips, I was really seeing Schenectady as this extension of the classroom — like a lab — and really drawing on those resources and students learning directly from the people doing amazing work in Schenectady.
You know, how do you engage students with issues of social justice? Looking at art is one method. But it’s in the doing. They say some of the best learning is when it’s emotional, and when you’re invested in something, it’s emotional; you want to succeed, you want to do well.
Q: What do you hope and see your students take out of these types of courses?
A: You really see how much people respond to collaboration. They’ll get to the end of the course and they’re like, “I learned how to collaborate! This is going to be really useful for me in the future.” And so, more and more, I want my students to have the real world experience as much as possible — and that’s also with field trips, or bringing guests on-campus and going off-campus.
Students can spend a lot of time not even leaving campus so getting them out there gets them into that middle space between their academic experience and what comes afterwards. I think it’s so important to have that space in which they can begin to see themselves and the professionals we’re reading about.
Some of the goals I really want students to get out of my classes are how to navigate ambiguity, how to be resourceful, how to be resilient, understanding that it’s not about failure as much as it’s about iterations — if something doesn’t work out, try it a different way — and giving students that space to be creative and use their imagination.
What I want is getting students who don’t know each other, in a span of 10 weeks, with people on a team — you can have a physicist with an English student with someone in environmental studies, this whole range — and they begin to really identify their own strengths and each other’s strengths. And they have positions! When they go into the real world and are able to say, “I was a project manager for this app we developed in my business of art class,” those are the kinds of experiences that they really take with them that’s really going to open doors for them.
Q: How do you see yourself in your role as a professor and educator?
A: I really see myself as a facilitator to learning so that’s really been shaping my approach. If there’s anything about what I do, it’s really crafting these types of learning experiences that are going to leave students feeling inspired. I always tell my students, “the best thing I can do is foster your own curiosity.” I feel like my gifts, or what I can give in my role, is really to help students transform their lives, you know, give them the tools to transform their own lives. I’m here to initiate — give them an impetus, a prompt, something to get excited about — and then support them in their own development with that. I take a backseat and let the students drive the bus.
Q: What is a mantra that you live by?
A: My mantra now, especially after COVID, is “engagement high, stress low.” My idea of success is that you’re here on time, if not early, because you’re eager, you’re curious, and you lose track of time.
Q: What does community mean to you?
A: To me, it’s really about sharing resources. It’s about, how do we leverage what we all can contribute? How do we build partnerships?
Q: How has the success of your classes impacted your thoughts on higher education overall?
A: For me, it’s really rethinking higher ed. I’ve been doing it, but we have to keep staying ahead of the eight ball. What do students need? Am I providing them with the skill sets that they need, that they can apply in various contexts that will make them successful? And if we’re not having these conversations, we’re really doing a disservice to students. And the students themselves, 99% of them say, “I’m here to get a diploma so I can get a job.” But a piece of paper — it may get you in the door, if that, or get you an interview, but you have to be able to talk to people, you have to have your soft skills. I tell my students, you could have a great engineering project, but if you can’t figure out how to pitch it to someone, it’s not going to happen. So you can’t just be one myopic thing, you have to be a bunch of different things.
Q: I feel like, sometimes, art history and art studies can get a bad rap. How do you see what you do and what you try to get your students to do — engaging with the community and with each other to use art as a means of looking at large and important issues — subverting the expectations of what art is and what art students do?
A: I’m a big advocate for STEAM — science, technology, engineering, art, math. What I say to students who say “I’m not creative” is “do you have an imagination?” You’re creative.
The first thing is getting students to create something that does not yet exist. I think they see that the things they’re learning in sociology or history — there’s an artist who made something about that. To me, art is the ultimate interdisciplinary subject because you’re learning socio-political issues, religious issues, environmental issues through art. Art is a reflection of the world. It is critical of the world. And in doing that, it helps us to think more critically about things.
I think it’s very much about a way of thinking and being innovative and being critical that applies to everything. No subject exists in a vacuum and everything benefits when it brings in other things. And because the world is so much more complex, you have to do things in groups. You cannot exist alone.
Getting students to see the application of the visual thinking, the visual learning, the visual learning is just so valuable. It’s how you see the world, but also how you create the world and what you bring to your practice.
Our digital program is blowing up. More and more students are starting to come over here, because they’re like, “you really have to be creative in this world. You have to be prepared for unknowns all the time.”
Art is about being vulnerable, art is about taking risks, art is about iterations and different processes — either in doing it or learning about other artists who have done it.
Q: What are you looking to do next?
A: I would love to do some student activity work where I don’t have to grade students. The students are amazing! They’re all A-, maybe an A. So, my next thing is, how do I co-create with my students so I’m right there on their team?
“Getting To Know …” is a weekly feature spotlighting people making a difference in the lives of others. If there’s someone you think we should feature, let us know by emailing us at [email protected].
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