 Linda Fawcett at the 2007 TASA Annual Banquet in Odessa.
- Photo by Victoria Taylor-Gore
TASA Welcome from Linda Fawcett, Professor of Art, Hardin-Simmons University
As TASA's past president for 2008-2009, I invite you to explore this website and see how we can serve your professional needs and wants. I hope you like what you find, sign up as an institutional or individual member and come to our annual spring conference!
I became a TASA member in 1982, served for the first time on the Board of Directors later that decade, and then again as President and Board member in the mid-90s. I am proud and honored to be entrusted once again with leadership of this valuable organization. I feel qualified to tell you that TASA has not wavered from its original purpose, yet at the same time has evolved to reflect the inevitable changes to higher art education during the last 36 years!
TASA officially began in 1970 as a venue for communication between two-year and four-year Texas schools of higher education, particularly in regard to transfer courses and creating professional standards for art faculty. Its recommended freshman/ sophomore transfer art curriculum-also sanctioned by the Texas Higher Education Board (THEB) -has been reviewed and updated twice since 1970, adding, deleting and revamping courses as deemed necessary. TASA also promotes the THEB's common course numbering matrix (TCCNS) another tool to make course transfer easier.
TASA's up-to-date professional standards of higher education art faculty include recommendations for the MFA as terminal degree for studio art faculty, course loads, hiring and tenure issues, art course credit-hour/ contact-hour ratios, academic freedom, responsibilities and censorship of the arts.
In addition, to help art departments with their inevitable self studies and goal/assessment practices, TASA has augmented its transfer art curriculum with suggested teaching objectives for each course, created and voted on by TASA art faculty members from across the state. It is this kind of inclusive communication and networking that is the HEART of TASA.
My presidential goal for the next two years is to oversee the current re-evaluation of our transfer curriculum to promise its continuing relevance and usefulness. And also to enhance ways to achieve ongoing dialogue between art departments of all sizes in Texas; for instance, to see how changing demographics, technology and/or state requirements affect pedagogy and academic policies. Public, private, two-year, four-year, liberal arts, specialized, fundamental courses, advanced hours, specialist faculty, generalist faculty, large enrollment, smaller enrollment, undergraduate, graduate, BFA, BA, MFA, MA, studio art, art history, and art education/ public school certification are all intertwining issues that require constant discussion. With this in mind, I will work hard to maintain and increase the number of TASA institutional members as well as individual membership.
But I couldn't do it alone. TASA has an energetic Board of twelve rotating members equitably representing two and four-year schools that give of their essential time and input to make TASA's goals happen. The work they do is rewarding and fundamental to ensure the quality of higher education in Texas and to promote the fine arts as a vital part of life for all Texans.
Here's a plug for individual memberships! What I have enjoyed the most during the past two and a half decades with TASA and what keeps me looking forward to the conference every year, is the camaraderie, warmth, and easy humor between members. And besides the benefits of good will, I have profited many, many times from the contacts I have made, gaining information used to directly improve my teaching, administrative "saavy," my personal artwork, and the marketing of my work.
Join TASA today! Get involved, come to our conference, check out our new academic chat-room on this website (TASA's latest venue for faculty inter-communication), read our on-line newsletter, find a college/university gallery to show your work (or find an artist to show in your college/university gallery!), find a venue to present your professional papers or other research, find an art job or advertise a job, find an answer to your technical or pedagogical questions about the classroom or your own studio practice, and/or just plain know that you're not alone with your professional problems and triumphs! On behalf of the Board and long-time TASA members, I welcome you back or for the first time and look forward to getting to know you!
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