Strategic Innovation Lab (sLab)

CALL FOR PROPOSALS
2011 COLLEGE ART ASSOCIATION
DESIGN STUDIES FORUM SPONSORED SESSION

LOCATING THE DESIGN COMMONS

To successfully tackle today’s social and economic issues, individuals from diverse disciplines must bring together their expertise in a collaborative effort. This creates many challenges, including effective leadership, productive engagement, and coherent process. If an interdisciplinary model means working together to explore a challenge using different perspectives in a coordinated way, design is positioned to prove itself as a problem-solving methodology unparalleled at solving complex problems. Design fosters a collaborative intellectual community by using the campus as laboratory, seeking out opportunities to engage with all disciplines. This panel will examine how the design commons serves as a catalyst to contribute to the educational, cultural, and economic life of the academy and beyond.

Papers can address the following:

• Do art and design expression produce social capital, build trust, increase tolerance, and produce a sense of community?
• How do the arts help all students develop a sense of identity as well as their own unique worldview?
• What are the links between the creative life of campuses and the larger cultural and economic milieu?
• Do creative skills learned in college educate future knowledge workers for the creative economy?

PROPOSALS FOR PAPERS TO SESSION CHAIRS ARE DUE MAY 3, 2010

Send proposal materials via e-mail to both session chairs:
Dawn Hachenski McCusker, James Madison University, hachendm@jmu.edu;
and Andi Witczak, University of Kansas, awitczak@ku.edu.

Or you can mail proposal materials to: Dawn Hachenski McCusker, James Madison University, MSC 7101, Harrisonburg, VA 22807

Every proposal should include the following six items:

1. Completed session participation proposal form, see below for website link.
2. Preliminary abstract of one to two double-spaced, typed pages.
3. Letter explaining speaker’s interest, expertise in the topic, and CAA membership status.
4. CV with home and office mailing addresses, email address, and phone and fax numbers. Include summer address and telephone number, if applicable.
5. Documentation of work when appropriate, especially for sessions in which artists might discuss their own work.
6. If mailing internationally, it is recommended that proposals be sent via certified mail.

Please go to the following link and click on the 2011 Call for Participation to download a complete copy of the guidelines and to fill-out a session participation form. http://www.collegeart.org/proposals/

If you are selected you will be required to have a CAA individual membership.

ALL APPLICANTS WILL BE NOTIFIED BY JUNE 1, 2010.