Review Committee Members
Patty Bode 
Patty Bode interweaves social theory and art education in PK-12 public school classrooms, juvenile justice settings, museum environments and with pre-service teachers, undergraduate and graduate students. In 2014 she helped to launch a new, urban public school for middle and high school youth in Springfield, Massachusetts called Springfield Conservatory of the Arts (SCotA). In her role as Magnet Resource Teacher for integrating arts at SCotA she draws upon ten years in higher eduction at Tufts University-SMFA and The Ohio State University, as well as more than seventeen years as a public school art teacher to reinvent practices that make social theory visible. She publishes, advises, lectures and teaches in the fields of critical multicultural education, urban education, teacher education and art education and policy. Patty's website is http://www.pattybode.com/
Jody Boyer 
Jody Boyer is an arts educator and visual artist living and working in the midwest. Over the last fourteen years she has taught in a variety of P-16 environments including public schools, arts nonprofits and Universities throughout the Midwest. She currently teaches art education and digital art courses at the University of Nebraska at Omaha and visual arts at Norris Middle School. In 2014 she received the Caucus of Social Theory in Art Education’s Social Theory in Practice Award for K-12 Art teachers, and was selected 2014 Nebraska Middle School Art Educator of the Year by the Nebraska Art Teachers Association.
In her studio practice she explores the broad interdisciplinary possibilities of traditional and new media with a specific interest in p ersonal memory, cinema, landscape and a sense of place. She received her B.A. in Studio Arts from Reed College, her M.A. in Intermedia and Video Art from the University of Iowa, and her K-12 teaching certificate at the University of Nebraska at Omaha. Her artwork has been shown nationally, including at the Des Moines Art Center, Womanmade Gallery in Chicago, and the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts and in such publications as Review and Art in America. More information can be found at her website, www.jodyboyer.com.
Meaghan Brady Nelson
Dr. Meaghan Brady Nelson is an Assistant Professor of Art Education at Bellmont University. Her research and service centers around the ways collaborative artmaking experiences and critical visual literary can inspire social consciousness and social responsibility, along with her multilayered identity of becoming a ‘Mothering-ArtAdemic’. Her work has been published both nationally and internationally and as a painter she keeps an active studio practice. Dr. Brady Nelson has been fortunate to have taught in a variety of settings with a multitude of subject and curriculum since 2000. These settings include the university level, public school classroom teacher, art specialist and in museums and community settings.
Her ultimate goal as an educator is to empower students to use their knowledge in order to engage with their community and the greater world through teaching and service. She is an advocate of Service-Learning and has worked to include this as an element in all her courses here at Belmont. As the executive collaborative creator of the Kids Arts Festival of Tennessee she is dedicated to community arts-based service in the Nashville area. The Kids Arts Festival of Tennessee is the first arts festival in the state of Tennessee that is fully designed for children and youth. Due to grants she has secured, the annual event has registered increased funding which allows it to remain free to attendees and to grow in scope each year with attendance reaching over 6000.
Dr. Brady Nelson lives in Franklin with her supportive husband and their two daughters.
Cala Coats 
Cala Coats is Assistant Professor of Art Education in the School of Art. Her research focuses on intersections of ethics and aesthetics with an emphasis on public pedagogy, nomadic inquiry, and socially engaged art. Coats has published in a range of books and journals and has upcoming chapters in Makers, Crafters, Educators: Working for Cultural Change (Routledge) and Bridging Communities Through Socially Engaged Art (Focal Press/Routledge). She is also currently co-editing an issue on creative disruption in Trends and serves as incoming co-editor for The Journal of Cultural Research in Art Education.
Jennifer Combe 
Jennifer Combe is a mother, artist, and associate professor of art at The University of Montana. Before shifting to higher education, she taught K12 in Washington State public schools for fifteen years.
Her artwork investigates gender, contemporary motherhood, and children’s development. Her visual work has been exhibited at The Missoula Art Museum, Holter Museum of Art, The Gift Shop exhibition space at The Henry Art Gallery in Seattle, and The Washington State Center for Performing Arts. She is invested in teacher education programs that integrate community arts and teaching from a social theory perspective. Her educational work has been featured in The Journal of Social Theory in Art Education and The Journal of the Motherhood Initiative for Research and Community Involvement. SMore of her work can be found at www.jennifercombe.com.
Derek Fenner 
Derek Fenner is an artist, educator, and researcher living in Oakland, California. After a decade of experience as an art educator and administrator in the Massachusetts juvenile justice system, he is completing his Doctorate in education at Mills College (2016). His research interests include, youth participatory action research as pedagogy, juvenile justice education, decolonizing methodologies, and arts based research. He works in the Integrated Learning department at the Alameda County Office of Education.
Alice Penissi 
Alice Pennisi is an associate professor and Graduate Program Coordinator in the Art Education Department at SUNY Buffalo State. She currently teaches courses in curriculum design, aesthetics/art criticism, research, as well as Youth Cultures, a course focusing on adolescent development and the subcultures of middle and high school-level youth. She was a middle and high school teacher in the New York City public schools, teaching art, science, social studies, ELA, and arts integration. She was also co-founder of New Design High School on New York City’s Lower East Side. Her interests are in teacher research as personal professional development and adolescent school re-engagement through teacher-student curriculum negotiation.
Manisha Sharma 