SU’s Irvine selected for NAEA Distinguished Service Within the Profession Award

SU’s Irvine selected for NAEA Distinguished Service Within the Profession AwardFebruary 12, 2007Jaime Winne Alvarezjlwinne@syr.edu

Syracuse University professor Hope Irvine has been selected by the National Art Education Association (NAEA) to receive the Distinguished Service Within the Profession Award. The honor recognizes outstanding achievement and contributions in previous years to the field of art education and to national and state associations. Irvine, professor and chair of art education in the College of Visual and Performing Arts and the School of Education, will receive the award during the NAEA National Convention March 14-18 in New York City.

The NAEA previously named Irvine the 1990 Higher Education Art Educator of the Year and the 1996 Eastern Region Art Educator of the Year. She has also served the association on its board of directors and as eastern region vice president. She will retire from SU at the close of the spring 2007 semester.

“This award is given to recognize excellence in professional accomplishment and service by a dedicated art educator,” says Susan Gabbard, NAEA president. “Dr. Irvine exemplifies the highly qualified individuals active in the field of art education today: leaders, teachers, students, scholars and advocates who give their best to the profession.”

“I can only hope that some of the thousands of students I have taught and learned from in my years teaching junior high in Manhattan and at Syracuse University would agree that I deserve this honor from my NAEA colleagues,” says Irvine.

Irvine, a native of New York City, spent 24 years teaching art in a northern Manhattan junior high school. In 1970, she was consultant to the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs as part of its “Museums Collaborative,” developing ways for schools and museums to work together. As president of the Upper Manhattan Artists’ Cooperative, she was a founder of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s “Cloisters Community Art Workshops.” As chair of the Northern Manhattan Bicentennial Corp., she organized a re-enactment of the Battle of Fort Washington and successfully led the fight to have the park drive named for Margaret Corbin, the last person to fire a cannon in the battle. The Manhattan Borough president proclaimed June 22, 1982, as “Hope Irvine Day in the Borough of Manhattan” and legislative resolutions were passed in the New York State Assembly and Senate “noting her unyielding commitment to excellence in the service of others.”

Since 1982, she has been chair of SU’s Department of Art Education. In 1985, she developed the Art Seven and Eight New York State Syllabus and Teacher Guide and turnkey training to implement the syllabus statewide. She has served on the Commissioner’s Advisory Council for the Arts and the New York State Council on the Arts funding panel for Arts in Education. She was co-chair of the New York State Committee for Curriculum and Assessment in the Arts and Humanities, which produced New York State’s Learning Standards for the Arts in 1995. In 1992, she was president of the New York State Art Teachers’ Association; in 1995, she was named Art Educator of the Year. In 1996, she was inducted into the City University of New York’s Hunter College Alumni Hall of Fame.

Irvine is a painter of sedimentary landscapes. She has authored numerous articles and published “A Thinking Approach to Interdisciplinary Experience” (Trillium Press, 1993). Through hundreds of presentations and keynote addresses, she has garnered a national reputation as an energizing and humorous speaker on the topic of art education.

NAEA members include elementary, secondary, middle level and high school art teachers across the country; representatives from America’s major art museums, state departments of education and arts councils; and major colleges and universities throughout the United States and in 66 foreign countries.