Alum Anna Davidson (M.F.A. ‘16) has been awarded a National Endowment for the Arts Research Grant in the Arts to support a project studying student outcomes of an environmental education curriculum that uses art-based, immersive, and interdisciplinary teaching methods.

Davidson, now a senior researcher at Cornell University’s Department of Natural Resources and the Environment, will share the grant with her colleague Dan Torop (Cornell University, Department of Art) for the project titled “Examining the value and impact of art integration in an immersive, traveling field school in art, ecology and land use in upstate New York.” 

This is one of 18 Research Grants in the Arts projects funded in the 2022 fiscal year.

“I am excited about this research,” said Davidson, “because it will provide scientific data that supports the dire need for the arts to be a major part of an education in the natural sciences. Furthermore, my hope is that it will exemplify the important impact interdisciplinary experiential field courses have on students-the kind of courses that change students’ future trajectory-that make them want to go out and do something good for the planet.” During this unique immersive class, Cornell students will travel and work at sites significant for their artistic and ecological impact. “Our research objective is to study the value and impact of using artistic and place-based practices to understand and interpret ecological systems and land use issues in New York.”