College appoints new dean
of School of Fine and Performing Arts

The State University of New York at New Paltz is pleased to announce the appointment of Mary Claire Hafeli as the new dean of the School of Fine and Performing Arts.

Hafeli is currently the director and professor of the Master of Arts in Teaching Program at Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) in Baltimore. Prior to that, she spent seven years at SUNY New Paltz (1998-2005). Most recently, Hafeli served as associate dean of the School of Fine and Performing Arts (2003-2005), but also was an associate professor and director of the art education program (1999-2003). She returns to the New Paltz campus on July 1.

“The School of Fine and Performing Arts has always been central to the college’s identity,” said College President Steven Poskanzer. “To ensure its continued success, it was imperative to find a leader who will inspire colleagues and help them take the school and its programs to the next level. Candidly, it was a blow when Mary was lured away in 2005. To have brought her back home to lead the school is a considerable triumph for us.”

Hafeli’s role at MICA includes leading ongoing, collaborative curriculum development and implementation; and overseeing course scheduling, admissions, budget, facilities, exhibitions and visiting art educator/critic presentations for a program of 120 students. In addition, she writes departmental self-study assessment reports for cyclical accreditation by Middle States and the National Association for Schools of Art and Design.

Hafeli has also served as a member of MICA’s long-range planning committee; chair of the college’s long-range planning assessment sub-committee; a member of the college’s applied research committee; a member of the academic affairs committee; and chair and co-chair of several art education faculty search committees.

As associate dean and director at New Paltz, Hafeli successfully coordinated the design and implementation of comprehensive assessment programs within each department of the school and coordinated art education faculty participation in program accreditation by the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE).

Hafeli said that she is thrilled and honored to have been selected as dean. “The arts are thriving at New Paltz – as focused areas of study for undergraduate majors and graduate students, as an integral part of the college’s general education core, and as a hub for outstanding ongoing exhibitions and programming through the Dorsky Museum, through theatre, music, and dance productions and performances, and through art studio, art history, and art education lecture series,” said Hafeli.

Hafeli earned both her Ed. D. and Ed. M. in Art and Art Education from Columbia University Teachers College (1999 and 1995, respectively). She received her Bachelor of Fine Arts in Visual Art at the University of Michigan in 1982.

Hafeli is widely published in journals such as: Studies in Art Education; Art Education; and Primary Voices. Her book with J. Burton, “Conversations in Art: The Dialects of Teaching and Learning,” is to be published in 2009 by the National Art Education Association. Hafeli also has many published book chapters and several in press and under review.

She is currently the co-editor of the Journal of Qualitative Research in Art Education and a senior research associate at the Center for Arts Education Research at Columbia University Teachers College in New York City.

Hafeli has been recognized with the Mary Rouse Award (2006) and the Marilyn Zurmuehlen Award for Research in Art Education (2005) from the National Art Education Association, and received the National Arts Club Award of Distinction for Painting in 1994. In April 2009, she is to receive the Manuel Barkan Award from the National Art Education Association for her article on adolescent themes and contemporary art practice, titled “I Know A Lot of Things That You Don’t. You Wanna Hear Some?”

Hafeli replaces Kurt Daw, who served as dean from 2003 until 2008, when he left for a position at San Francisco State University in California as dean of the College of Creative Arts.