The summer master’s program at the Art Academy of Cincinnati enables educators to embrace their creativity
School may be out for the summer, but there’s still learning happening at the Art Academy of Cincinnati (AAC). In fact, thanks to the college’s Master of Arts in Arts Education (MAAE) program, summer is when arts educators get to focus on their art and art education.
“The MAAE program is a three-summer intensive, low-residency program. Our ideal candidate for the program—our typical master’s student—is a teacher who’s currently working in a K-12 environment and is looking to progress to the next step of their education by getting that master’s degree,” says Stephen Kenny, chair of the MAAE program. “We schedule our program around the times when they won’t be in a classroom typically so they can do their classroom work throughout the fall and spring and then join us for three summers, eight weeks per summer, and move on to that next level.”
The goal is to help art educators be better teachers by giving them space to focus on themselves and their own creativity.
“Most of us who have found our way into art education, a lot of times we focus so intensely on the classroom and on our students that we might not always have time for our own studio practice,” says Kenny. “Our mission here in the MAAE program at AAC is to give students that time to work on their own personal studio practice so they can bring that love of making, that love of creating that brought them into the field in the first place … back to their students.
“It’s a studio intensive program and students also take art ed seminar classes and other liberal arts [and] art history classes and round out their summer semesters with that.”
The program accepts both local and non-local educators (housing is available for those who need it), but AAC also keeps the program small, as only about 15 undergrad and graduate students are taking MAAE classes this summer.
“It’s a pretty small program but that allows us to be nimble, to work with students individually to see what everybody’s up to and spend some real quality time with them in their studios and talk about what it is they want to achieve personally and what their individual goals are,” says Kenny.
Students are given their own space for their own use and the opportunity to follow their own passions. They’re given access to AAC’s facilities, which include a printmaking lab, photo labs, a woodshop, kiln, ceramics labs, screen printing space and more. And at the end of each summer, the students are given the opportunity to show off their work in an exhibition.
Those interested in the program should check out the AAC’s website, says Lenny. There they can learn about the application steps and talk to an admission counselor.
