ArtsEdSearch.org is the nation’s first online research and policy clearinghouse focused entirely on student and educator outcomes associated with arts learning in and out of school. Featuring user-friendly summaries of high-quality research, and overviews of current research examined through different lenses, ArtsEdSearch provides reliable and objective information about the academic, cognitive, personal, social and professional outcomes of an arts education. ArtsEdSearch also identifies gaps in research and serves as a valuable roadmap for researchers and funders looking to tackle the most pressing education issues of our time.
Whether you’re a business leader, parent, administrator, educator, student, researcher, artist, policymaker—or simply a concerned citizen—ArtsEdSearch is a powerful resource to help you become a more effective advocate for a complete and competitive education that includes the arts for every young person in America.
Click the logo to take you to the ArtsEdSearch research and policy database.
ArtsEdSearch Graduate Fellows Program
The ArtsEdSearch Graduate Fellows Program is designed to strengthen the arts education field by cultivating its next generation of researchers and engaging them in the expansion of ArtsEdSearch. The inaugural class of eight fellows has been selected from faculty recommendations from Lesley University, Harvard School of Education, Florida Atlantic University, and Virginia Commonwealth University. Fellows participate in biweekly online seminars facilitated by AEP staff and consultants, beginning October 4th, and ending December 13th. Through the seminar, fellows become familiar with ArtsEdSearch, review and discuss new studies to determine their eligibility for inclusion in ArtsEdSearch, and summarize and present studies for inclusion in ArtsEdSearch.
2012 ArtsEdSearch Fellows
Lauren Austin, Virginia Commonwealth University
Lauren earned her bachelors of fine arts from the Art Institute of Boston at Lesley University in 2007. During her years in Boston, she taught art to a wide range of ages and abilities, specializing in at-risk middle school populations. Upon returning to her hometown of Richmond, VA in 2009, Lauren transitioned to teaching children with autism before entering Virginia Commonwealth University to pursue a master’s of art education. Lauren’s research interests have led her to designs a high school art curriculum to foster autonomous inquiry, publish recommendations for founding a national coalition for arts integration with the VCU Think Tank, and co-found a digital journal of graduate level research to re-envision the field of art education from the objective perspective of emerging scholars. Her professional passions focus on the unique issues of social justice and traditional segregation in the city of Richmond.
Mary Brooks, Lesley Univeristy
Mary is a student in the Community Arts/Integrated Arts Masters program at Lesley University. She is a scientist/textile artist. She graduated from Brown with a BA in biology and has worked in cancer biology labs for many years. She also has a masters degrees in textiles from the London College of Furniture and Bradford University. Mary’s textile work highlights her interest in construction of textiles (both on the loom and in baskets) as well as the role that color plays in the final product. These parallel pathways of science and art are now coming together as she explores how arts integration in high school science curricula might foster creativity and deeper connections between and within each of these disciplines.
Susan Hyatt, Florida Atlantic University
Susan was recently appointed as the new Arts Integration Project Manager for the School District of Palm Beach County; she also serves as Lead Consultant for Blue Planet Writers’ Room, a non-profit creative writing center she co-founded in 2008 and co-directed until August of 2012. Susan’s background includes a BFA in Theatre and an MFA in Acting. She worked as a professional actor for ten years while simultaneously working as a teaching artist with the Center for Creative Education. In 2002, Susan became the Director of Education at Florida Stage, where she created a series of drama and dramatic writing programs, including CHILDREN OF CONFLICT, an international, web-based collaboration among young people in West Palm Beach, Florida; Kigali, Rwanda; Prishtina, Kosovo, and Johannesburg, South Africa; the collaboration culminated in the creation and staging of two multimedia performance pieces in 2008 and 2009.
Susan is currently pursuing a PhD in Curriculum and Instruction, focusing on arts integration, at Florida Atlantic University. Her proposed dissertation is a qualitative case study of the impact on students’ creativity and critical thinking when engaged in an arts-integrated international collaboration; the study will focus on elementary school students in Mexico, Ireland, and the United States. She expects to graduate in 2013.
Miranda Hynes, Lesley Universtiy
Miranda studies in the Community Arts Masters program at Lesley University with an emphasis in Visual Art. She is a painter and a musician. She graduated from Mary Baldwin College with a B.A. in Studio Art and a dual emphasis in painting and ceramics. Currently, she is an instructor in the Museum of Fine Art’s Community Art Initiative as well as in the Artful Healing program. Because of her passion for art, people, and the connections between them, Miranda is currently researching methods of teaching creativity to people who have never considered themselves creative.
Raquel Jimenez, Harvard Graduate School of Education
Raquel is a student of arts education, research and policy at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Education, where she is currently pursuing an Ed.M. Raquel’s work locates itself at the intersections of human development, social change, and learning through the arts. Given the cultures of accountability in American systems of education and social policymaking trends, Raquel is particularly interested in operationalizing arts-related research as a policy tool for advocacy. Raquel approaches the Fellowship with perspectives as an artist, administrator, and researcher and has previously committed herself to investigating the ways in which intensive arts experiences might act as catalysts for positive youth development through the lens of El Sistema pedagogy in the United States.
Currently, Raquel serves as Program Manager for the Community Performances and Partnerships program at the New England Conservatory and as a Research Assistant for Project Zero, Harvard University’s institute dedicated to arts education scholarship.
Daniel Román, Harvard Graduate School of Education
Daniel is visual artist currently pursuing an Ed.M. in Arts in Education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. He holds an MFA in Painting from Tyler School of Art and a BFA in Painting and History of Art with a minor in Philosophy from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Prior to his MFA studies, Daniel worked as a fifth-grade self-contained teacher in the Miami-Dade County Public School system where he created and led the Polymath Studio, an after-school art program for fifth-graders that integrated the academic curriculum and exposed students to arts-related careers.
Daniel’s research interests include: defining quality and rigor in art education, access to meaningful art-making opportunities for underserved communities, the integration of authentic art-making experiences and academics, and curriculum design that connects art education at the elementary, secondary, and higher education levels to professional practice.
Olga Vazquez, Florida Atlantic University
For Olga, music and the music industry has been the core of her life. She holds a Bachelor of Music with a minor in Business Administration and a Master of Music, both from the University of Miami. She is currently pursing an education doctorate in curriculum and instruction from Florida Atlantic University (FAU). Olga’s recent work includes curriculum design and program evaluation with a concentration in arts integration. She spent her first two years at FAU as the South Florida Team Program Coordinator in the Music-In-Education National Consortium, a FIPSE funded project through the Listening Learning School Network at the New England Conservatory.
Olga has worked as a researcher in arts integration programs including the Supporting Communities Through Arts Learning Environments (SCALE) project for Chicago Arts Partnerships in Education (CAPE). She is currently developing and implementing an integrative Spanish program for children ages one through five at one of FAU’s lab schools, Karen Slattery Educational Research Center for Child Development. Olga is a prize winning pianist, accompanist, and bass-clarinetist. She spent several years as a liturgical musician, directing and accompanying church choirs, in Palm Beach and Broward Counties and continues to serve her church community in various capacities. Olga’s previous work experience includes positions in concert management and academic administration at various South Florida non-for-profit arts institutions.
Sarah Zuckerman, Harvard Graduate School of Education
Sarah has taught Visual Art K-12, with the majority of her nine years in teaching spent at the Key Learning Community, a Multiple Intelligence public school where learning is done through interdisciplinary projects. She is committed to enabling students to develop as rigorous and curious thinkers, while engaging in society as global citizens. Outside of the classroom, she has worked on numerous policy issues in education reform, and is a practicing artist who has had solo shows in the US and Mexico. Over her career, Sarah has received numerous awards for her work, including the Sontag Prize for Urban Education, is a Lilly Teacher Creative Fellow, and is an alumna of Teach Plus.
Currently, she is pursuing her M.Ed at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, where she is part of the Arts in Education program. She looks forward to leading arts-based school reforms, and is very interested in measures of effective teaching in the arts, the effect of the arts on divergent thinking patterns, and issues of arts equity for low-income students.