Opened Practices Users Working in: Art Conservation

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Vicki Cassman, Ph.D., is Director of Undergraduate Studies and an Assistant Professor in the Department of Art Conservation at the University of Delaware (UD). She received her doctorate in anthropology in 1997 from Arizona State University and she is a 1985 graduate of the Winterthur/University of Delaware Master's Program in Art Conservation. Before returning to the University of Delaware in Fall 2006, she was an itinerant textile conservator, an instructor for six years for the UD graduate art conservation program (1986-1991) and an assistant professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (1997-2006). She is the main editor for the book Human Remains Guide for Museums and Academic Institutions (AltaMira Press 2007). Her current research interests include teaching strategies for conservation including e-portfolios and assessment, undergraduate research, collection management, Andean Archaeology, and textiles.

Dr. Vicki Cassman’s university teaching career began a year after graduating with her Master’s degree from the Winterthur University of Delaware Program in Art Conservation [WUDPAC] in 1985. She came back as a guest instructor for the intensive WUDPAC textile block and added hands-on learning to a course that had been traditionally a lecture and fieldtrip-based course. After six years of teaching she went back to get her Ph.D. in Anthropology to connect conservation and archaeology, something that seemed a large gap in both practices at the time. In Arizona she took traditional lecture-based classes, which were stimulating because of the topic, but not fulfilling. There were exceptions, those few who wove research into the fabric of the course (i.e. Dr. Christopher Carr, ASU), or what is officially known as PBL or Problem-Based Learning, as she learned in 2006 when she returned as a faculty member to the University of Delaware.
After finishing her Ph.D. in 1997, she was hired as a visiting professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. She taught cultural anthropology, museum studies and cultural resource management courses initially in the lecture style that was expected. With the opening of the new teaching and learning center (TLC) she repeatedly heard the analogy of lectures, as verbally spreading seed to the wind and hoping something will germinate. For learning to be effective, it should be active, much as she had intuitively done for WUDPAC. In both her undergraduate and graduate courses she started to promote learning communities even within her large anthropology lecture hall classes (100+ students). To explain concepts of reciprocity students exchanged pennies and then analyzed their strategies applying concepts of reciprocal relationships and wealth accumulation. For concepts of exogamy/endogamy, students were married off and using poker chips (Las Vegas after all!) for children they arranged marriages for their offspring. These concepts for most students seemed inconceivable and trivial in lecture format. But with active learning, students began talking to each other, and were able to use and understand these concepts in deeper ways. As soon as WebCT became available, discussion groups, assignments, quizzes and a free online anthropology textbook were added. In terms of teaching development, UNLV was nurturing and experimental.
Upon her arrival in 2006 to the University of Delaware, she found a culture of teaching already existed, including a very logical and useful university-wide assessment plan. The acronym PBL was heard everywhere on campus and new faculty hires realized this was a formal name for something already part of her teaching toolbox. Art conservation teaching is hands-on and activity-based and colleagues in the Department, the College and the University support, encourage and practice this strategy too. The department’s work on assessment has been integral to the success of the art conservation programs. Because there is faculty buy-in for assessment, it has been a rewarding experience. Past curriculum development has focused primarily on WUDPAC or the master’s level, but both undergraduate and master’s level training present challenges and the two programs are linked in many ways.
In the undergraduate program we have asked the students to create portfolios for graduate school interviews. These are large binders with the evidence of their academic, artistic and internship work. The enormous portfolio sizes make them physically and intellectually awkward, therefore Dr. Cassman has been an advocate for conversion to e-portfolios. With the UD call for creating learning and presentation portfolios, she jumped at the opportunity in June 2010 and our capstone students have created their first learning and presentation portfolios in fall 2010. She is actively increasing the repertoire of resources to encourage more student self-reflection, to aid assessment and to help students prepare for their next steps after graduation all through the use of Sakai.