WELCOME THE 2023-2024 EMERGING ADMINISTRATIVE FELLOWS The NCAA Fellowship includes a one-year membership in NCAA and a waiver of the NCAA conference registration fees. In addition, NCAA Fellows are matched with a seasoned NCAA member who serves as a mentor before and at the conference. Candidates for the fellowship are nominated by another arts administrator and have an endorsement from an administrator at their home institution.
Amy Pfeiler-Wunder Dr. Amy Pfeiler-Wunder currently serves as the interim associate dean for the College of Visual and Performing Arts, Kutztown University. She is entering her 15th year at Kutztown University, where she served as two years as department chair in the Department of Art Education. She has also served as the master’s in art education coordinator and chair of the graduate council and commission on human diversity at Kutztown. She earned her Ph.D. in Teaching and Learning: Art from the University of Iowa and has over 20 years of experience teaching in art education settings. She is active in the National Art Education Association (NAEA), currently serving as the chair of the NAEA Research Commission. She previously served as the Higher Education Division Director on the NAEA board and the Higher Education Representative on the Research Commission from 2016-Spring 2020. In addition, she served on the task force focused on fostering leadership growth within the NAEA organization. In 2022, she was accepted to the School for Art Leaders Professional Learning Workshop at the Crystal Bridges American Art Museum through the National Art Education Organization. Through collaboration with leaders in the field, she guided the creation of the Professional Learning Group to support K-12 research, serving as co-chair and then the first chair of the Professional Learning through Research Working Group under the Research Commission. She also served as the NAEA Student Chapter National Liaison working with the NAEA board and national student leaders to establish a pre-service board position.
Jeff Beeckman Beekman's artwork since the early-2000’s has explored human and environmental trauma, with the past 10 years devoted to two series, the Battlefield Project and the current Florida Coastline Project. The Battlefield Project photographically explores memorialized and unmemorialized conflict sites in the U.S. Civil War. Many document sites and phenomena directly observed. Others record digital projections of archival photographs of soldiers or heroic paintings of battle. These projections are cast upon the sites where those depicted fought and fell. Rather than post-production collage via Photoshop layering or the like, he is interested in the physical integration, image wrapping over structure, and how projected fragments from the past are supported by and illuminating of the landscapes and structures they are cast upon. Whether observed or constructed, the goal of these photographs is the same – to create a compression between a traumatic past and the present day, a space where the relationship between site and memory, the now and that fleeting moment where the nation almost succeeded in tearing itself apart, can be investigated. Before joining Florida State University, Beekman held full-time faculty positions at the University of Oklahoma (2009 - 13), Georgia Southern University (2005-09), and the University of New Mexico - Gallup (2002 - 05). He holds degrees from the University of New Mexico and the University of Florida.
Brian Franklin Brian Franklin is an Associate Professor of Expanded Media and Associate Director of the Wonsook Kim School of Art at Illinois State University, where he teaches classes in digital fabrication and interactive sculpture. He received an MFA in New Media from Pennsylvania State University and a BFA in Media Arts from the State University of New York at Fredonia. Franklin’s interdisciplinary work has been shown in venues ranging from traditional galleries and festivals to impromptu takeovers of public space in the United States, Europe, and Asia. In collaboration with Chris Wille as the artist group Sphere, their work explores the complicated relationship between virtual and physical objects, actions, and identities, giving concrete form to vague landscapes of networked activity. Sphere’s work has been shown in solo and group exhibitions as well as festivals and conferences, including The World Maker Faire, New York City, NY; The Digital Games Research Association Annual Summit, Salt Lake City, UT; Chicago Games as Art and Culture, Dittmar Memorial Gallery, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL; and Stimulus/Response/Affect, exhibition and symposium, Oakland University, Rochester, MI. Franklin also collaborates with artist and designer Ladan Bahmani, addressing language and its power in mass communication. They have exhibited, published, and presented their work nationally and internationally in venues including the IASDR 2021 Conference held at Hong Kong Polytechnic University in Hong Kong, Siggraph SPARKS online presentation series, and the International Conference of Design Principles & Practice at the University of Newcastle, Australia. Their large-scale installations of procedurally generated asemic writing paired with patterns and forms referencing illuminated manuscripts from their Irish and Persian backgrounds have been shown in solo exhibitions at Auburn University, University of Michigan Hospital Gallery, and will be the subject of an upcoming 2025 solo exhibition at the St. Louis Artists’ Guild. Ruth Adams A nationally recognized artist, Adams’ photography deals with issues of mindfulness, intimacy, ancestry, mortality and renewal. She has exhibited internationally, won numerous awards and grants, and her photographs hang in numerous private and public collections. An experienced photographer, digital/analog hybrid artist, and educator, Adams has developed a reputation as a dynamic instructor and an innovative artist and enjoys introducing students to the ever-changing world of analog and digital photography.
Christopher Kaczmarek Christopher Kaczmarek is a New York based artist, educator, and administrator whose creative work spans both experimental and traditional practices, including sculpture, site specific installations, performance, video, built circuits and solar-powered objects. His work is often interactive and designed to guide the viewer towards a deeper contemplation about the active and passive roles they play in their inhabited environment. Recent research interests have been concerned with the act of walking as a praxis for artistic production, and the shapes in which collective and collaborative settings can be formed to become spaces where imagination and creativity are used in the service of hopeful outcomes. He has had the opportunity to present work at national and international galleries and festivals such as Art Souterrain in Montreal, Canada; the Trinity College Science Gallery, Dublin Ireland; the Byzantine Museum of Agios Germanos, Prespes Greece; the New York Hall of Science, Queens NY; Real Art Ways, Hartford CT; the Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus OH; Art Museum of the Sichuan Fine Arts Institute, Chongqing, China; Art Walk Projects, Edinburgh, Scotland; Walking Art and Relational Geographies International Encounters Girona-Olot-Vic, Catalonia Spain; and the Czong Institute for Contemporary Art, Gyeonggi-do, South Korea. Christopher Kaczmarek received an MFA in Visual Art and an MA in Modern and Contemporary Art History, Theory and Criticism from Purchase College, State University of New York, and is currently an Associate Professor of Interdisciplinary Art, and Chair of the Department of Art and Design at Montclair State University, New Jersey USA. Previous academic administrative positions have included Program Coordinator of the Visual Arts Program at Montclair State University; Director of Instructional Support for the School of the Arts at Purchase College, SUNY; General Manager of the Purchase College Center for Community & Culture-Yonkers (PC4Y) in downtown Yonkers NY; and Studio Supervisor for the Sherman Studio Arts Center in the Ohio State University Department of Art. |