2020, Twenty-Twenty, Two Zero Two Zero, Dumpster Fire. There are a lot of different names for the previous year. I could write a book about it, and I’m fairly certain that there will be quite a few books, articles, dissertations coming in the years ahead. So rather than writing some long in-depth treatise on my thoughts on the year here is a brief retrospective post with the highs and lows of the year in regards to design and education. Let’s start with the lows so that we can finish on the highs.
Lows
Teaching
“The greatest asset a student has is every other student in the room” one of my professors once said this while I was still a young impressionable undergrad and it stuck. The issue with COVID is that that “greatest asset” is no longer there. Rooms are either empty or at half compacity. Students are forced into being islands unto themselves. Methods like synchronous, asynchronous, live-streaming, partial streaming, etc. can’t replace the constant, instant, and fluid interactions that students have and need in a traditional atmosphere. I’ve read numerous articles and seen countless videos sharing methods of how to utilize technology to aid in teaching the arts but nothing I’ve discovered has been able to come remotely close to recreating the atmosphere of community and comradery found in a traditional arts education. As difficult as it has been teaching in this online/hybrid world, nothing has been as difficult as watching my students struggle and not knowing how to fix it.
Research
In a typical year a college professor divides his time between the “big three” which is Research, Teaching, and Service. Depending on what type and/or level of institution they’re employed at the percentage of those will differ. Southern Miss is an R1 (Research Level 1) institution which means it has significant expectations in the area of research. Now before you worry that I did not meet the university’s research expectations, that is not the case. However, I did not meet my own expectations, I didn’t even reach my own lowest expectations. Concessions obviously have to be made for a year like 2020, and there is little doubt Southern Miss and academia as a whole will be evaluating this year with lower expectations or no rubrics at all. That is because for most of us this year was about survival, in both a literal and figurative sense.
Traditionally I break my big three percentages to 40% Research, 30% Service, 30% Teaching. This percentage was vastly upended by COVID and lead to an experience where I felt more like a designer who taught rather than an educator who designs (this goes against everything for me see the first sentence on my home page). Some good came from this which I will address later in this post.
One of the better pieces I completed in 2020:
Rest
Deeper into my blog you’ll find a post dedicated to rest and its importance to me. Rest is vital to success and the lack of it this semester was extreme low. I preach a lot about sacrifice, dedication, determination, etc. and this year tested my limits to all of those. I took no days off, and worked until 9 most nights with a few weeks in there where there was little to no sleep at all. It was a lot like being back in grad school minus the payoff of being granted a degree and being able to move forward with my life. The payoff this time was seeing students still able to show their performances and exhibit their work and even though its apparent what I’ve done or sacrificed hasn’t been recognized or isn’t respected by those above me, it is obvious that I have the appreciation of my colleagues all of who I deeply respect.
A few pics of the good moments of rest I found in 2020:
Highs
Service
The area of service may account for some of the lows but I was extremely productive none the less and am very proud of what I managed to accomplish. I have written about the importance of service in the past, but in 2020 the need for service multiplied for educators everywhere. In the School of Performing and Visual Arts (SPVA) at Southern Miss I saw my colleagues develop outdoor stages for dance, build green screen “pods” or mini rooms so theatre actors could be digitally placed in environments, and I saw them develop splash/face shields for ceramic wheels so students could throw clay. Needless to say I was and still am in awe of their massive undertakings.
For me service meant the creation of a new way to show what we do. Never before had any of the areas of the SPVA held performances, concerts, exhibitions, or recruitment and guest lecture functions virtually and this year ALL of it would have to be. This meant that a new website would have to be constructed that enabled us to quickly create, update, and manage events. Unfortunately, academia is a bureaucracy, which would mean that there would only be 12 DAYS from the point of final approval to the launch of the website. While I designed and developed this site a team of students (see SPVA in Student Work) worked on creating a magnificent campaign to announce the launch of the site.
Throughout the semester this site allowed me to build and manage major events like the Big Show our multi-discipline recruitment day and our upcoming Revelry arts festival which has more than 40 events. To see the site and the massive amount of work please visit: usm.edu/spva
Students
There is no greater reason to be a teacher than witnessing student success. This year was a banner year for the design area at Southern Miss. Our students won 60+ Addy Awards, 5 students were accepted into the National Student Show and Conference, and we had 7 students published in Creative Quarterly. We had students get jobs, enter grad school, and we had students excel throughout this pandemic crisis creating some of the best work I have seen in my 10 years of teaching. To see student success in any given year is a pleasure, but to see it occur under such extreme circumstances is quite frankly the highlight of the year.
