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Dianne
Turner

Education

"There's more to art than what people understand.
There's a theory and logic behind it that affects how we live."

-Dianne Turner

By Mike Stepanovich

Dianne Turner came to Cal State Bakersfield in 1989 on a hunch. It’s a hunch that has paid off.

The professor of art education in CSUB’s School of Education had just graduated from Penn State and was applying for jobs. “I sent resumes to 10 places, and this was the 10^th,” she said. “But I liked it when I came. When you get a hunch you have to act on it.”

She said Barbara Schaudt, another education professor, picked her up at the airport when she came for her interview, and on the drive back to campus, “I asked her if she knew where I could get some good California wine. She said, ‘Sure.’ I took some nice wine back with me to Pennsylvania. So I knew it was going to be a good interview.”

While she liked the campus and the atmosphere, the fact that the position she was applying for was a created one was the real attraction. “One of the things I saw here that was different from the other places where I applied was it was a position no one had ever held before. At other universities, people work for years to get the position, but once they get it the curriculum dictates what they do. Here I was allowed to write the curriculum. I didn’t see the point of earning a degree and being told what to do. Here I used my degree.”

Her curriculum focuses on teaching art and how to use art in the classroom to prospective elementary and secondary teachers.

Why is art important? “For one thing it gives an appreciation of understanding the environment and what we have and its value to society,” she said. “It’s what we use every day. Its what we sit on. Someone had to design that. It’s what we drive in. Someone had to design that. It’s what you walk in. Someone had to design that. You have to teach someone how to do that and understand what people’s needs are. There’s more to art than what people understand. There’s a theory and logic behind it that affects how we live.”

“Art education is teaching about art whether it be history or works of art or careers in art – so that when you earn a degree in art education you have to take a whole scope of art classes as well as education classes and learn how to teach those process to students and why they’re important to society.”

Turner became interested in art and art education in high school in Washington, D.C. “You know how you dial-in in high school on three career areas? Well for me it was art, education and veterinary science. We had a pre-veterinary program in high school where there was a demonstration on how to administer anesthetics to a dog or cat. So that was out. In art class I was more encouraged by having art works selected for exhibition – so I was more confident. And when the teacher was absent, I was often asked to stand in, so that’s how I came to the conclusion that art education was the direction I wanted to go. My teachers must have seen something in me.”

Her interest in art took her to Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond where she earned a bachelor’s of fine arts. After graduation she took a teaching position in a South Carolina elementary school. “South Carolina was trying to raise test scores so they were hiring physical education, music and art teachers,” she said. “What that meant for elementary teachers was that they would have planning period every day of the week, as well as children being educated in those three areas. The state didn’t have enough graduates in those areas, so it recruited outside.”

It didn’t take her long to see the many opportunities in South Carolina, and with some encouragement from colleagues she earned a master’s degree from the University of South Carolina.

But that just whetted her appetite. The combination of teaching, earning her master’s and long-harbored desire to be a college professor prompted her to go for her doctorate. . “I think when I was in college at the undergraduate level, I became interested in being a college professor, but because my grandfather was a college dean, I would see higher education from that side. When I was teaching school, I could see it a lot easier.”

She applied to three schools, was accepted to each, but chose Penn State University. “My grandfather was the associate dean of education and dean of summer sessions at Penn State,” she said. “They had one of the most renowned programs in art education. So since I had a place to stay there, Penn State is where I decided to go.” Plus I always heard that in my field, once you’re a graduate from Penn State, there’s a camaraderie, a network from Penn State. Proven to be true.”

Turner uses works of the renowned impressionist painter Claude Monet to involve her students in art. “I use Monet as a springboard to get people interested in art because his work is very appealing to folks once they learn how Monet was influenced by developments in science,” she said. As a result, “My students are beginning to understand the scope of how art affects everything.

She became interested in Monet after a conversation with her eye doctor in South Carolina. “He told me … about Monet’s eye problem and asked if I knew how it affected his work. I didn’t. I was really touched that he was up on an artist. Monet had problems similar to cataracts that affected him later in life. We now know that some of his works   … at Giverny he was painting from memory, not from what he was seeing, because couldn’t see. His vision affected what went on canvas.”

As Monet has inspired her, she works to inspire school children to seek a college education. “One of my goals is to get school children interested in Cal State or higher education in general,” she said. She does that by either developing art in education programs with her students at local elementary schools, such as the program at Ronald Reagan Elementary School, or by bringing children to CSUB “where I actually teach them on campus. That’s one of the things I did growing up with my grandfather, so I saw the value of higher education. … It’s one of the ways to get people interested in higher education, whether they go into that subject or not. It gets them interested in coming to school and coming to our university.

“What I try and do in the classroom is create an atmosphere where my students say that they had fun. I believe if you’re a teacher and enjoy what you’re doing you’re going to be able to inspire children. Nothing deep there, it’s just that simple. You just have to enjoy what you’re doing. And your students will pick up on that and pass on that enthusiasm.  My students say, ‘This was a lot of work, but you learn a lot.’ If you present it in a way that’s enjoyable, they’ll pass it on.”