Randall Everett Allsup, Ed.D. holds degrees in music performance and music education from Northwestern University and Teachers College Columbia University. He is currently Associate Professor of Music Education at Teachers College. Randall is the author of Remixing the Classroom: Toward an Open Philosophy of Music Education (2016) from Indiana University Press. 

Hello my name is Bert Benally, a Diné (Navajo) from the Navajo Nation, I currently reside in New York, NY.  I have three children, 2 in college and one in high school who lives with me.  I am currently a Doctoral student in the Art Education program at Teachers College – Columbia University. My educational background includes a; BFA – Sculpture from Arizona State University, MFA - Sculpture from University of Wisconsin-Madison, and a MEd – Education from Washington State University.  I have worked in Education for over 20 years as a K-8 art teacher and adjunct Art instructor at small colleges in New Mexico and Arizona.  I am also a part-time professional artist, having shown art, mostly installations throughout the American continent.  My most notable art project, was a collaboration with Chinese Artist - Ai WeiWei, in the summer of 2014 in New Mexico.  Before coming to Teachers College, I actively engaged providing creative music/art outlets for the local youth, participating in church activities, and collecting music for my hobby as a DJ.  Now I mostly just read and write papers, and occasionally go to a movie picked by my daughter.  

David Bogen is the Vice President for Academic Affairs and Provost at the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA), in Baltimore, Maryland.  His academic background is in philosophy of language, social theory, anthropology, science and technology studies, urban education and urban design. He has over 20 years of experience in higher education leading programs, research projects, and major institutional partnerships in Boston, Providence, Vancouver, and Baltimore focused on enhancing the positive cultural and economic impact of art and design institutions on our cities.

Judith Burton is Professor and Director Emeritus of Art and Art Education at Teachers College Columbia University; she received her Ed.D. from Harvard University in 1980.  She researches and writes about the artistic-aesthetic development of children, adolescents, and young adults, exploring the implications this has for teaching and learning and the culture in general.  In 1995 she co-founded the Center for Research in Arts Education and in 1996 founded the Heritage School, a comprehensive high school featuring the arts in New York City. She received the Manuel Barkan Award for excellence in research writing, the Lowenfeld and Eisner Awards for lifetime achievement in art education and the Ziegfeld Award for services to international art education. She is a Distinguished Fellow of the NAEA, a member of the Royal Society of Arts, UK; a Distinguished Professor of The Central Academy of Fine Arts, China, and a trustee of the Maryland Institute College of Art.

Over the last 30 years Anna Cutler has worked in education and cultural settings at a local, national and international level. Her purpose has been to explore and improve educational interventions in a range of cultural and cross-disciplinary arts environments.  She is known for her innovative experiments in practice and the building of new theoretical perspectives. She aims to generate high quality educational provision that is rooted in research, and is committed to positive, long-term change that is profound, sustainable and inclusive. Anna believes in transformational leadership and partnership working practices that are based on trust, generosity and respect.

Daniela Fifi is a doctoral student in Art and Art Education at Teachers College, Columbia University. She holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Pratt Institute, New York and a Master of Arts in Art Gallery and Museum Studies from the University of Manchester, UK. Daniela has been awarded several fellowships and awards during her career including the Whitney Museum’s Teen Programs Research Fellowship, the Education and Public Programs Fellowship at the Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Art Gallery, and the Samuel H. Kress Interpretive Fellowship. She is currently the Interim Vice President of Programs and Education at the Brooklyn Children's Museum and has worked as a museum educator as well as a curatorial specialist in galleries and museums in Europe, United States and the Caribbean. She has taught art education, world art history and human development in the arts at The City College of New York and New Jersey City University. She is the co-founder of Scarlett Project in Trinidad and Tobago, a non-profit art organization that works to provide art educational opportunities for Caribbean youth. She also serves on the editorial board of ARC: Contemporary Caribbean Art & Culture and is the Managing Editor of Small Axe: A Caribbean Platform for Criticism (Duke UP). Daniela enjoys spending her free time in nature or listening to music.

Max Levi Frieder is a community based public artist from Denver, Colorado. He graduated  from the Rhode Island School of Design with honors and a degree in Painting with a focus in “Community Based Public Arts”. He has since worked with communities in different contexts across the globe. His previous work ranges from community building in refugee crisis, hospital workshops, abuse counseling through art  to peacebuilding and conflict resolution. His projects have taken him from Jordan to Israel and Palestine, Turkey, New Zealand, Australia,  Costa Rica, Colombia, Cuba, Mexico, Canada and throughout the United States. Although trained in painting, his work focuses on public engagement through creative facilitation and inspired participation.

Russell Granet, Executive Vice President of Lincoln Center Education and Community Engagement, is internationally known for his work in arts education.  Since his appointment in 2012, he has spearheaded Lincoln Center Education’s highly successful fundraising efforts, its renovation and the rebranding initiative that simultaneously confirms Lincoln Center’s educational mission and its message of dedication to bringing the arts to all schoolchildren.  Mr. Granet’s leadership was cited as “visionary” in the 2013 Proclamation by the City of New York and he currently serves as an advisor to the NYC Mayor’s Cabinet of Children.

Shari Hersh is a community artist and organizer. As Senior Project Manager and Founder of the Restored Spaces Initiative at the Mural Arts Program, Hersh researches and develops innovative projects in the public sphere. In partnership with artists, activists, youth and communities, Hersh facilitates a collaborative model of practice that emphasizes art and creativity as essential vehicles for catalyzing dialogue, building relationships and making decisions collectively. Her projects con.vene communities in collaboration with artists to create  palpable positive impacts in neighborhoods and to affirm citizen rights to shape and use the city’s public spaces. Her work addresses the question, ‘How can we reknit social fabric through reshaping our communities, our environment and ourselves?’ Her recent efforts focus on socially engaged projects with youth, community and interdisciplinary collaborations that address issues such as housing, sustainability and access and right to green spaces. She most recently has spent two years as an editor on the artistic team of Jeanne Van Heeswjick's PHLASSEMBLED, now on view at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Richard Jochum is a conceptual artist working in a broad variety of media with a strong focus on video, interactive installation, performance, and photography. He is a studio member at the Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts and an associate professor of art and art education at Teachers College, Columbia University. He has worked in various media since the late 1990s and has had more than 130 international exhibitions and screenings. Richard received his PhD from the University of Vienna (1997) and an MFA in sculpture and media art from the University of Applied Arts in Vienna (2001). Richard’s art practice is accompanied by publications and research in the field of cultural theory, new media, and contemporary art and he has been awarded several grants and prizes. One of his latest large scale art installations has been a 30,000 square feet collaborative video mapping project onto the Manhattan Bridge.

Claire Porter, www.cportables.com, is a choreographer/writer/performer. A Guggenheim Fellow, Porter has received Fellowships from the NEA, NJSCA and The Mid-Atlantic Arts Foundation. She has an MA in Dance from Ohio State, BA Math and is a Laban Movement Analyst. In addition to her solo work Claire choreographs for Claire Porter & Sara Juli and teaches Laban Movement Analysis at NYU.

Paul Sacaridiz is the Executive Director of the Haystack Mountain School of Crafts in Deer Isle, Maine. He is a member of the International Academy of Ceramics and serves on the board of the Craft Emergency Relief Fund. As an artist his work has been included in exhibitions at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Denver Art Museum and the Houston Center for Contemporary Craft among others and he has delivered papers and taken part in conferences and symposiums nationally. Prior to leading Haystack he was Professor and Chair in the Department of Art at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Laia Solé is a visual artist and art educator who has been teaching both in informal and formal educational settings –from pre-K to Graduate School levels–– for over 15 years. Along her teaching practice she has cultivated an art practice centered on the experience of space. She is interested in exploring the social and physical dimensions of space by ways of actions that render visible and transform the dynamics of space, often in collaboration with local communities, artists and professionals from other fields. Her artwork has been exhibited in collective exhibitions at The Drawing Center (New York, 2015), Cuchifritos Gallery (New York, 2016) or Fabra i Coats (Barcelona, 2016) among others. Solé is a doctoral candidate and instructor in the Art and Art Education program at Teachers College, Columbia University. Her research concentration includes socially-engaged art, social space and play. www.laiasole.net

Studied Philosophy at the University of Barcelona and followed graduate studies on Anthropology and Cinema at the Sorbonne University, Paris. He was Media Educator Consultant for the Department of Education of New York City from 1990 to 2007, where he developed Media Literacy Education programs for students, educators and parents. In 2004 he co-founded “Overseas Conversations”, an annual series of international conferences in New York focusing on youth, media and education.  He has co-edited, among other publications, “Mapping Media Education Policies in the World”, “Youth Media Visions: Conversations Across Cultures” and “New Opportunities for Media and Information Literacy in the MENA Region.” Since 2007, Mr. Torrent is Project Manager of Media and Information Literacy initiatives at UNAOC.

http://www.unaoc.org/what-we-do/projects/media-and-information-literacy/

Ciara is the FAO Schwarz Family Foundation Fellow at Mural Arts Philadelphia where she works with the Restored Spaces Initiative. In her main role, she acts as an environmental educator for Trash Academy, a “collaboratory” between community members in Southeast Philly, artists, and environmental activists. The project seeks to inspire a wellspring of actions around trash issues and tests and shares the best grassroots solutions that emerge. Ciara is from Chester, Pennsylvania and graduated from Swarthmore College with a degree in Education and Environmental Studies. Before coming to Mural Arts Philadelphia, she managed the Chester Youth Courts, a youth-led disciplinary model rooted in restorative justice and was also the garden manager at an elementary school where she focused on science-based garden instruction.

Lily Yeh is an internationally celebrated artist whose work has taken her to communities throughout the world. As founder and executive director of the Village of Arts and Humanities in North Philadelphia from 1986 to 2004, she helped create a national model of community building through the arts. In 2002, Yeh founded Barefoot Artists, Inc., in order to bring the transformative power of art to impoverished communities around the globe through participatory, multifaceted projects that foster community empowerment, improve the physical environment, promote economic development and preserve indigenous art and culture. In addition to the United States, she has carried out projects in many countries including Kenya, Ivory Coast, Ghana, Rwanda, China, Taiwan, Ecuador, Syria, Republic of Georgia, Haiti, and Palestine.  Her life and work were the subject of the feature length documentary The Barefoot Artist.    

Nicole Johnson is an artist and art educator from Kingston, Jamaica. Since 2010, she has worked as a college-based teacher educator in her home city and in the United States. She is currently a doctoral student and an instructor in the Art and Art Education program at Teachers College, Columbia University. Her core research interests are in the professional identity development and the lifelong education of art teacher educators.

When Eric Mason picked up a camera for the first time in sixth grade, he sparked a passion. Although his fascination with photography was new, his creative edge was not. He has always had a knack for making things. In the vein of his favorite photographer, Thomas Struth, Mason prefers urban landscapes over human subjects. He enjoys finding the beauty in seemingly mundane objects. Mason has come a long way from using a Canon AV-1 35mm to snap photos in middle school. He has since earned a Master of Fine Arts degree in photography and a master’s in printmaking. He served for several years as an art school administrator before enrolling at Columbia Teachers College. He’s now a third-year art education doctoral student.

CJ Reilly III is a creative professional whose enthusiasm for problem-solving has resulted in an extensive body of work that bridges ideas in illustration, design, education, and agriculture. These ideas, turned into exhibits and published work, include companies, organizations, and artists: Teachers College, Columbia University; Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA); The New Yorker; LEGO; USAID Nepal; U.S. Peace Corps; Helvetas Nepal, Basil Twist; Jonathan Horowitz; Communication Arts; Oxford University Press, and The National Art Education Association (NAEA).  Currently, CJ is a graduate student at Teachers College, Columbia University where his field of study is in Art Education with Initial Teacher Certification. His research and studio work focuses on developing visual and kinesthetic-based educational materials that address food security issues in agriculture/horticulture, specifically focusing on marginalized Nepali farmers and families.