Chair, AI College-wise Taskforce
Member, Faculty Senate, Sweet Briar College
Co-founder, Medieval and Renaissance Studies (MARS) program, Sweet Briar College
Founded interdisciplinary minor that brought together three core and eight supporting departments; its mission is to encourage students to make connections across disciplines and holistically recontextualize Medieval and Renaissance culture.
Faculty Advisor (First-Year, Sophomore, and Major), Sweet Briar College
Duties included: Meet with First-Years during orientation to introduce them to our general education program, review their high school credits and college placements, discuss current interests to identify departmental advisers (this often takes a couple of semesters), keep their advising file current, transition student and file to major advisor. Major advising requires not just oversight of gen ed and major programs, but of study abroad, internships and job placement. I continued this work in an unofficial capacity at the University of Richmond and do so here at VCU as well.
Departmental Assessment, Sweet Briar College
Duties included: Wrote assessment mission rubrics and goals. Regularly analyzed and updated the measurement of those goals and the uses of their results. Resulting departmental redesign responding to findings.
Digital Humanities Ad-Hoc Committee, Sweet Briar College
Duties included: Organization and attendance of multiple events on campus including those led by Bryan Alexander and Jim Groom; application for and attendance at Blended Learning Conference at Bryn Mawr and the Kress Institute for Digital Mapping and Art History; presentation on Digital Art History at THATCamp @CAA (February 2015); drafting of accepted proposal to CIC Consortium for Online Humanities Instruction (Andrew W. Mellon Foundation) for course on “women artists in the global community” (sic); ideas learned and have been incorporated into curricular development, pedagogical reappraisal, and faculty scholarship.
Honors Committee
Duties included: Admittance in to program, review of Honors First-Year, Second-Year and Upper-Level courses, Pannell Scholarship proposals, Honors Thesis prospecti, and Summer Honors Research applications.
General Education Ad-Hoc Committee, Sweet Briar College
Duties included: Attendance at and report submission for numerous conferences on General Education, Assessment Logistics, Global Learning, Student Success, First-Year Experience, Association of American Colleges & Universities’ Liberal Education and America’s Promise (LEAP), as well as a week-long institute on General Education Reform (University of Vermont, summer 2013) the process of which this committee was engaged, in collaboration with the Academic Priorities Committee (on which I also served). Bi-annual participation in our Writing Assessment Rubric group.
Benchmark Committee, Sweet Briar College
Duties included: Set benchmarks for faculty salaries in conjunction with the chairman and vice-chairman of the BOD, the President, and our Director of Institutional Research based upon AACU, Annapolis Group, and Peer (endowment, operating budget, enrollment, acreage, etc.) comparisons.
Academic Priorities Committee, Sweet Briar College
Duties included: Oversight of the college’s curricular focus; organization and implementation of faculty retreats around related topics; review and placement of open faculty lines in consultation with President, Dean of Faculty and Students, and VP for Financial Affairs.
e-Portfolio Pilot Group, Sweet Briar College
Duties included: Participation in e-portfolio training, including conference attendance and librarian and faculty consultation; I currently have 10 of my courses on Digication, allowing for interactive syllabus and assignments, student interaction, and for other faculty and staff to use as models. Students also had their own e-portfolios and we used these both for gen ed assessment and to highlight and assess the impact of interdepartmental interaction. For instance, in the MARS program, we had students process and enunciate the impact of the minor coursework in the form of biannual essays reviewed by the members and director. In addition, students then also have a record of their work over the four years to act as a fleshed out résumé.
Four-course Ad-Hoc Subcommittee, Sweet Briar College
Duties included: Researched the pedagogical and financial benefits and disadvantages of a four-course curriculum rather than the five-course model Sweet Briar College formerly employed. Composed a report for presentation to the faculty, Dean, and Board of Directors that included the argument for a reduction in the number of courses faculty teach per year, even though the total number of credits would increase. The proposal was adopted by all bodies.
Instruction Committee, Sweet Briar College
Duties included: In addition to regular duties of curriculum oversight, members of the faculty not sitting on the committee were asked to participate in assessment reform for key areas of the general education program. I was involved in the reassessment of the oral skills, writing skills, and the knowledge areas of the fine and performing arts, language and culture, and non-European cultures.
Chair and Member on Various Search Committees: Archeology, Art History (three times), Arts Management, Economics, English Literature, History, Interior Design (VCU), and Political Science
Duties included: Composing and advertising job posting in conjunction with committee members and HR, vetting and narrowing applications, managing zoom interviews, coordinating campus visits, negotiation with Dean for salary and benefits.
Committee on Women and Gender Studies, Sweet Briar College
Duties include: Course scheduling and requirements.
Member, Library and Instructional Technology Committee
Duties included: Participated in early discussion of and planning for Smart classroom refit and library renovation.
Chair, Library and Instructional Technology Committee, Sweet Briar College
Film Studies Committee, Sweet Briar College
Duties included: Film choice and schedule; when possible, organization of director lecture.
Archaeological Advisory Committee, Sweet Briar College
Duties included: Establishment of Archaeology minor, interview of candidates.
Chair, Archaeological Advisory Committee, Sweet Briar College
Non-Committee Institutional Service
Internal promotion letters, frequently called on to write for colleagues
Organized numerous scholarly campus lectures, Sweet Briar College
Duties include: drafted invitation, secured funding, oversight of PR, and hosted and introduced lecturer.
Selected speakers: Niria Leyva-Gutiérrez, “Latin American Art Series” (2004), Joan Holladay, “Queens and their Books” (2005), Denva Jackson “The Quest for Power” (2013), Larry Nees, “Islamic Jerusalem” (2012), Nick Basbanes, “The History of Paper” (2014), Asa Mittmann “Wicked Somethings” (2015)
Faculty representative, Sweet Briar College Friends of Art
Duties include: Annual presentation on the state of the department, Acquisitions Committee, Faculty Chair of the Sculpture Commission Celebrating FOA and the completion of the Cochran Library Renovation.
Interviewed for “Art Collection and the Curriculum,” Visions (Sweet Briar College Friends of Art newsletter)
Highlighted Professor, Sweet Briar Alumnae Magazine (2010 and 2013)
Co-author, Arts Management Mellon Foundation Officer’s Grant draft, Sweet Briar College (Spring 2011)
Guest Curator, “Connect the Dots: Worldwide Art,” Anne Gary Pannell Gallery, Sweet Briar College (2007-2008)
Spring 2006 Host and Presenter, “Art Talks” coinciding with exhibit, “Sight and Insight, A Survey of Art History, from the Sweet Briar College Collection,” Anne Gary Pannell Gallery, Sweet Briar College.
2004 Evaluator, Sweet Briar College Junior Year in France Program
Scholarly Service
2020-present ICMA Digital Mentoring and Lecture Program, Initial Lead Organizer
We have begun this program with an afternoon session held during the virtual International Medieval Congress at Leeds University (vIMC) on July 9th, 2020. Using Zoom, I designed a meeting space for a group of member mentors and mentees who had agreed to participate. We began in a single group to hear a talk on publishing practicalities by Susan Boynton (Columbia University), co-editor of Gesta, followed by a question and answer session. I then moved everyone into three breakout rooms which had separate topics based upon feedback by participants via Google Forms (PhD Application and Survival process; the Job Market; and Fellowships and Funding), and then came back together again for a final exchange. We have additional mentoring events and lectures lined up for the coming months.
2023 NEH Reviewer for Humanities Collections and Reference Resources (HCRR) Panel 9: World History – Pre-Modern
2019-present Book Reviewer for Penn State Press
2016-present Consultant, advising the department of European Art at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, on the new installation of its medieval collections, that includes collaboration with Peter Schertz (Ancient and Byzantine art) and John Henry Rice (South Asian and Islamic art)
2016-present Book reviewer for Speculum, journal of the Medieval Academy of America
2016 External Reviewer, assessment of assistant professor’s promotion file
2014-2017 Membership Committee, International Center of Medieval Art
2014-2015 Co-Chair, International Center of Medieval Art sponsored sessions, “Moving Women, Moving Objects 300-1500,”Annual College Art Association Conference (New York City, February 2015) and 50th International Congress on Medieval Studies in Kalamazoo, Michigan (Kalamazoo, MI, May 2015)
2009 Peer review panelist for the NEH Summer Stipends program
2006 Reviewer of manuscripts submitted to the Art Bulletin
Student Support
2002-present Faculty Advisor (First-Year, Sophomore, and Major)
Duties include: Meet with first year students during orientation to introduce them to our general education program, review their high school credits and college placements, discuss current interests to identify departmental advisors (until major is declared), keep their advising file current, transition student and file to major advisor. Major advising requires oversight of gen. ed. and major programs as well as of study abroad, internships and job placement.
spring 2020 Organized a team of graduate students to recreate a virtual version of Virginia Commonwealth University’s campus gallery, the Anderson, using game design and photogrammetry covered in my Digital Art History graduate seminar (spring 2020), so that the senior class’s BFA Capstone Exhibition could still take place during the COVID-19 quarantine. To see the test site enter here (password: hello).
2001-present Conceived, planned, and co-led many student study trips to Charlottesville, Richmond, Washington, Baltimore, and New York
2002-present Faculty oversight of numerous successful internship, job, scholarship, and graduate school applications for University of Richmond and Sweet Briar students
Selected Internships: Smithsonian Museum, Cloisters Museum, Peggy Guggenheim Museum (Venice), Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts
Selected jobs: National Gallery (Washington DC) Metropolitan Museum of Art, Cooper Hewitt Museum, and New York Foundation for the Arts, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, VCUarts the Anderson
Selected graduate programs: Harvard, Chicago, Columbia, Georgetown, the University of Texas at Austin, Christies at University of Glasgow, the University of Syracuse, and the University of Edinburgh
2005-present Advisor or second reader on numerous PhD dissertations, Masters and Honors Theses, Directed Studies, Virginia Commonwealth University, University of Richmond, Sweet Briar College, and external institutions
Duties include: Oversight of composition and presentation of prospectus, editing and guidance during the research and writing process, finding funding to support research and writing, creation of dissertation or thesis committee, including selection and request of outside reader, organization of defense and final submission.
Process for undergraduate work is very similar to a masters thesis: a multi-semester process beginning in the junior year, often including study abroad and application and acceptance into Summer Honors, composition and presentation of prospectus, oversight of senior-year schedule, editing of multiple drafts, creation of thesis committee, including selection and request of outside reader, final draft, presentation, and submission.
spring 2016 Faculty contact to students in Introduction to Geo-Visualization, University of Richmond, Geography Department and Digital Humanities Lab
2005-present Advisor, Sweet Briar College Honors Summer Research Program recipients
2005-present Advisor, MARCUS (Mid-Atlantic Regional Conference of Undergraduate Scholarship) participants, Sweet Briar College
2002-2015 Advisor, Pannell Scholar Sophomore Honors Research recipients (formerly Pannell Scholars Fellowship), Sweet Briar College
2011 Conceived, planned, and co-led The Pyrenees: Pilgrimage, Heresy, and Courtly Love, a Sweet Briar College student and alumnae trip to France and Spain
2007-2010 PACE Grant (Promoting Academic and Community Engagement), tours for Amherst County 1st– and 9th-graders on Japanese and African art, Sweet Briar College
2002-2010 Arts Day Presentation to fifth graders from local schools, Sweet Briar College
2001-present Phi Beta Kappa Nominating Committee
Memberships
College Art Association (1994-present)
International Center of Medieval Art (1996-present)
International Medieval Society – Paris. Société Internationale des Médiévistes, Paris, (2005-present)
Society for Medieval Feminist Scholarship (2013-present)
The Medieval Academy of America (2014-present)
Renaissance Society of America (2015-present)
Society of Architectural Historians (2015-present)
Italian Art Society (2015-present)
Material Collective (2015-present)
Historians of Islamic Art Association (2015-present)
Mediterranean Studies Association (2015-present)
Languages
French (Old French and modern), Latin (Roman and Medieval), German, Spanish, Italian