CAA News Today

Statement

My name is Tiffany Lin, and I am honored to be nominated to join the CAA Board of Directors. I currently teach at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas as a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of Art. Prior to my career in higher education, I worked as a social worker and arts educator at various public schools in the San Francisco Bay Area. These professional experiences have dramatically influenced my pedagogical approach, and I have entered the realm of higher education through a synthesis of these experiences. As a member of the UNLV Art Department’s Diversity, Equity, Accessibility, and Inclusion Committee, I collaborate with colleagues to envision and implement policies for a more equitable landscape, one in which access to visual arts education is not stratified by any visible or invisible difference.

My teaching philosophy is grounded by the concept of “meeting the student halfway”, incorporating a compassionate, holistic lens that acknowledges the intersectional underpinnings of the individual. The majority of my student body identify as young people of color, most of whom are first-generation college attendees or immigrants, as my parents once were. If nominated to the Board, I would strive to address the cultural chasm that first-generation and non-traditional art students and faculty face in attempting to navigate academia and the professional visual arts world. Fostering a truly diverse CAA constituency would require explicit efforts to recruit and retain this demographic, traditionally underrepresented in higher education.

For the past two years, I have served as a member of UNLV’s MFA Application Review Board and the Graphic Design Curriculum Working Group. Although my artistic practice is multidisciplinary and largely analog, based in drawing and social practice, I primarily teach undergraduate graphic design courses. I have noted the increasing divide between fine arts and design, as institutions face external pressures to supplant fine arts programs with exclusively design based education. I stand firmly behind the transformative power of a broad humanities and arts-based education, and would advocate for maintaining an interdisciplinary focus that unifies both art and design curricula.

It would be an absolute honor to serve on the CAA Board of Directors and work toward creating a boldly inclusive visual arts community on an international scale.

Read Tiffany Lin’s CV