|
What is the CSUB Children's Art Institute (CAI)?
THE CAI MISSION
The mission of the California State University, Bakersfield (CSUB) Children’s Art Institute (CAI)
is to serve as a primary public opportunity for offering academic year and summer education in
the visual arts. The CSUB Children’s Art Institute, located on the University campus, presents
high quality education through providing a practicum teaching experience for prospective
elementary school teachers. Dedicated to exploring various media, art history and art themes,
CAI strives to educate and enlighten the University community as well as the greater Kern County
community. Made possible by the University and private support, CAI is grounded to serve as the
primary outlet and showcase for the University’s support of children’s art in the schools. Studio
media, art history, and exhibitions will be reinforced and applied in the teaching environment.
RECENT CAI ACHIEVEMENTS THIS PAST YEAR
Recent achievements of the CSUB CAI include a collaborative project with art in the schools. A
local elementary school (Ronald Reagan Elementary School) funds art materials for the academic
year to have CSUB students enrolled in pre-service teaching courses to teach art in the school’s
grade’s 1-6. Currently Ronald Reagan Elementary School works with the CAI to offer 30 classrooms
a year utilizing 125 pre-service CSUB students teaching the art lessons. The pre-service program
recently expanded to include another elementary school (Van Horn Elementary) beginning August
2006. The art in the schools program is funded by the school’s PTA. Each school principal
appoints a school art coordinator, who works with the CSUB Art 302/402 instructor to order,
distribute, inventory, and collect materials for the 30 art lessons taught at the school. In
addition to the art in the schools program, CSUB offers an annual “Art Day for Children” for
children in grades 1-6, held for one day in May. This annual event supports children’s art in
our community and helps pre-service teachers learn to teach art. Children are invited from across
the community to participate. Child participants take classes for the day, based on the works of
master artists, have a culminating exhibition, and a family barbecue to celebrate the day’s art events.
GOALS OF THE CAI
The goals include taking the Institute off campus to community centers and lower income areas,
providing children in need with scholarships to attend paying for CAI student teachers at off
campus sites as well as collaborating artists-in-residence to and promoting literacy via children’s
art books to increase children’s access to engaging material. CAI strives to support the professional
education and research mission of CSUB Schools of Education, and Humanities and Social Sciences,
through children’s art; provide a teaching model for CSUB’s prospective classroom, special education,
early childhood, and art teachers through a hands-on teaching opportunity; enhance the study and
exploration of art through culminating children’s art exhibitions at CSUB’s Todd Madigan Gallery;
and become recognized as a center of study for children’s art in the state of California, a
center that seeks to combine scholarship across disciplines through the visual arts.
|
 |
|
