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Pete Hocking is director of RISD's Office of Public Engagement. From 1988 to 2005, he was a staff
member of the Howard R. Swearer Center for Public Service at Brown University. As the Swearer Center's director and as an
Associate Dean of the College, he worked to develop innovative university-community partnerships, undergraduate research opportunities,
social entrepreneur projects, and to integrate community-based learning with the academic curriculum. Locally, he's worked
with dozens of non-profit organizations as a partner, board member and strategic planning leader. In addition to his community
practice, he is a working artist. As a teacher, he offers several courses at RISD and is a part-time faculty member at Goddard
College. He holds an MFA in Interdisciplinary Art from Goddard College and a BFA from Rhode Island School of Design.
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Sara Kudra is the AmeriCorps VISTA Program Coordinator for the 2009-2010
academic year. She recently graduated with a BArch from the Rhode Island School
of Design. At school she coordinated and cultivated the 2nd Life Center, a materials exchange program for the RISD community.
For this work she received the 6th Annual Student Leadership Scholarship, the RISD Student Leadership; Legacy Award, and the
Office of Public Engagement's Community Leadership Award. She also coordinated the first annual Senior Gift Committee which
raised money to purchase 10 industrial sized recycling bins for the facilitation of the 2nd Life Center. In conjunction with
her degree project, Sara started working closely with the local chapter of Habitat for
Humanity, and continues to enjoy participating on the weekends.
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Sam
Seidel is the
Office of Public Engagement’s first Community Fellow, serving for
the 2009-2010 academic year.
As a Community Fellow, Sam will be working with the Office to support the practices
of and advance conversation about artists and designers engaged in community teaching. Over
the last decade, Sam’s
work has focused on the intersections between education, arts and
incarceration. Trained
and
certified as a high school Language Arts teacher, Sam has taught a variety of
ages and subjects from first grade reading to post-secondary screenplay
writing. He
directed AS220 Broad
Street Studio, a grassroots arts program for young people in and transitioning
out of prison and was the founding director of the Maysles Institute youth
documentary film program.
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Melinda M. Bridgman is
co-originator and instructor for the RISD course, Art as a Source of Healing.
She has always been passionate about the power of art to transform and
"heal" and the importance of using one's art to bring positive change
and "healing" into other peoples' lives. Trained as a
silversmith, but with a deep desire to be a nurse, she feels the alchemic
connection between transforming base metal into gold and illness into health.
She has worked in various medical and community health care settings in
the U.S. and Canada initiating programs to integrate the arts as an essential
(healing) component of care. She holds a B.S. in Fine Arts from Skidmore
College and an MFA in Jewelry Design/Meltalsmithing from Indiana University.
For three years she worked in New York City as an apprentice to the late
Adda Husted-Andersen, a Danish silversmith. Then she was awarded a
Fulbright Scholarship for Work and Study in Copenhagen, Denmark. Presently
she works on independent silversmithing commissions; plays the violin;
practices Reiki; and explores Shamanism.
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Sarah Kern is the Student Coordinator for Leadership and Community Service. Currently a full-time RISD student,
Sarah studies in the Illustration Department, class of 2010. In the past year she has focused on community outreach and programming
in Public Engagement, partnering the office with over thirty local organizations. From her experience in leadership at RISD,
she is presently coordinating leadership programming between the Offices of Public Engagement, Student Life, Multicultural
Affairs, Residence Life, and International Programs. In the summer of 2009, Sarah ran workshops at Youth Pride Inc., exploring
the identity of the place and creating a mural for their Drop-In space. She has also lead RISD's Queer Student Association
since 2007, bringing programming to educate and enlighten the RISD community. For her contributions to RISD, she was presented
with the Student Leader of the Year Award, 2009.
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Jane
Androski is a Graduate Assistant in the Office of Public Engagement for the 2009-2010 academic year. Through her assistantship,
she will work collaboratively with various campus and community initiatives to encourage dialogic practice at RISD –
drawing from her experience as the Assistant Director to the Difficult Dialogues Initiative at Clark University (2006-2009)
where she worked to build skills of dialogue among faculty, staff and students; to create opportunities to engage in dialogue
around significant issues; and to integrate dialogic practice into the curriculum. As a first-year graduate student in Graphic
Design, she is interested in the interplay between dialogue and design as a generative, creative process for communication
and collaboration.
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Annie Bailey is a Healing Arts Coordinator
at the Office of Public Engagement. She is currently pursuing a BFA in Illustration from the Rhode Island
School of Design, class of 2010. She believes in the healing potential of storytelling as a means to connect and affirm cultural
identity and community. Through her studies, Annie uses poetry, stop-motion puppetry, sculpture and paint to explore pain,
grief, and desire. As a student volunteer at Bradley Childrens Psychiatric Hospital, Annie works towards integrating her beliefs about
the potential of art-making as a healing force into weekly group activities. With a background in medicine (Annie studied pre-med
before transferring to RISD) and a growing artistic practice, she feels lucky to be working towards bridging the gap between
two seemingly different life-paths.
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Shannon
Fogel is a coordinator of the Arts and Healing Program.
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