It took some time, but I eventually realized that I write a lot. In fact, much more than I truly realized. Just not in the way that I had always saw myself doing.
As an educator, I’m approached by students, alumni, colleagues, administration and outside parties through email…a ton. In fact, a big part of my after hours is spent on replying to all sorts of issues. Some big. Some small. Never anything in between, interestingly enough. But, the big ones are the ones I’m really proud of because it’s usually a moment where I can address a significant issue that relates to the professional development of my students…
…emails that provide a teachable moment that happens out of class, out of the designed curriculum and with no current place in my class itinerary: teaching in real-time, as I like to say.
I put a lot of care into every thing I do and, although trying to be informative, my secondary intention with these well considered emails is to impress upon my students the power of words and the value in articulating thought through written form.
EMAILS THAT KICK ASS are a collection of such correspondence…cut and pasted directly from my Outlook box, but with names changed to protect both the innocent and the guilty!
*CURRICULAR ASSESSMENT* was part of a group email that was sent by an {Academic Colleague} looking to collect data for a speaking engagement at an upcoming educational symposium. It was a brief questionnaire directed at most US faculty involved with degree-earning glass programs to gauge the degree of a versatility in curricular structuring. Although I wasn’t included on that list, my colleague, Michael Rogers, reached out and asked if I’d be interested in taking on a response. I was.
Not only would it give me a chance to articulate the breadth at which we tirelessly give to our student body, but it would also give the other recipients of that email an opportunity to further familiarize themselves with me as being a staple to the RIT Glass faculty - even though I’m not on a tenure track. Although teaching within the RIT Glass program for 5 years at this point, I’m still somewhat unrecognized as being a part of the team. To respond to this thread - and to respond thoughtfully, with conviction - was not only to broadcast my passion for how Michael and I are steering our Program, but also about indirectly communicating that I’ve got skin in the game. I might not be the most publicly heralded educator of my generation, but I’m certainly effective. I wanted to indicate that within the writing without directly addressing it.
Below is my response to {Academic Colleague} with all the other recipients copied in to add to the thread of conversation. My thoughts certainly extended beyond the 4 initial questions as a bit of context was needed, as was the need to indicate just how much more is being provided to our students’ development beyond glass technicality...
As an educator, I’m approached by students, alumni, colleagues, administration and outside parties through email…a ton. In fact, a big part of my after hours is spent on replying to all sorts of issues. Some big. Some small. Never anything in between, interestingly enough. But, the big ones are the ones I’m really proud of because it’s usually a moment where I can address a significant issue that relates to the professional development of my students…
…emails that provide a teachable moment that happens out of class, out of the designed curriculum and with no current place in my class itinerary: teaching in real-time, as I like to say.
I put a lot of care into every thing I do and, although trying to be informative, my secondary intention with these well considered emails is to impress upon my students the power of words and the value in articulating thought through written form.
EMAILS THAT KICK ASS are a collection of such correspondence…cut and pasted directly from my Outlook box, but with names changed to protect both the innocent and the guilty!
*CURRICULAR ASSESSMENT* was part of a group email that was sent by an {Academic Colleague} looking to collect data for a speaking engagement at an upcoming educational symposium. It was a brief questionnaire directed at most US faculty involved with degree-earning glass programs to gauge the degree of a versatility in curricular structuring. Although I wasn’t included on that list, my colleague, Michael Rogers, reached out and asked if I’d be interested in taking on a response. I was.
Not only would it give me a chance to articulate the breadth at which we tirelessly give to our student body, but it would also give the other recipients of that email an opportunity to further familiarize themselves with me as being a staple to the RIT Glass faculty - even though I’m not on a tenure track. Although teaching within the RIT Glass program for 5 years at this point, I’m still somewhat unrecognized as being a part of the team. To respond to this thread - and to respond thoughtfully, with conviction - was not only to broadcast my passion for how Michael and I are steering our Program, but also about indirectly communicating that I’ve got skin in the game. I might not be the most publicly heralded educator of my generation, but I’m certainly effective. I wanted to indicate that within the writing without directly addressing it.
Below is my response to {Academic Colleague} with all the other recipients copied in to add to the thread of conversation. My thoughts certainly extended beyond the 4 initial questions as a bit of context was needed, as was the need to indicate just how much more is being provided to our students’ development beyond glass technicality...
Dear {Academic Colleague} and All,
My name is David Schnuckel and I have served as full-time faculty in the Glass Program at RIT for 5 years now alongside my colleague Michael Rogers. He is on sabbatical this year and, although he would be nothing more than happy to contribute to this conversation, I'm taking the opportunity to step in and speak on behalf of the both of us regarding the nature of our Program. Before dipping into your questions, it's important to note that the structure of our Program is significantly different than most…
Michael and I co-chair a glass program that is part of a School that holds a curricular legacy for its declared undergraduate and graduate glass majors to engage in 6 credit hours of glass-based learning at 18 total contact hours with faculty per week. We have a what we call 'the Major Days' for these students: to be in house every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday from 9am to Noon and again from 2pm to 5pm to take part in glass-based instruction designed and facilitated by the faculty all year, every year. What’s unique about our curriculum is that declared undergraduate glass majors enter the Glass sequence in the Fall semester of their Sophomore year and build an arsenal of knowledge term by term until completing their Senior thesis in the Spring.
Historically, our Program (and the School with which is belongs to) has felt strongly that our major students should have 3 full days of major studio involvement in order to gather and advance the necessary idea development skills and material engagement skills needed to establish our students' individualized artistic identity and an understanding of their own personal making practice. Each faculty member shares the preparations of course study for the Sophomores, Juniors, Seniors, first and second year graduate students. Each faculty member has 12 contact hours with the major students every week.
The mode of instruction includes the following:
-group lectures
-group demonstrations
-group and individual critiques of work
-group and individual discussions, reviews of studio and writing progress.
It's a lot of time to cover a lot of media-specific territory...approaching a wide array of glass making processes as well as approaching many, many relevant issues of conversation regarding contemporary glass practice within a larger context of contemporary art, craft, industry, and design.
We're fortunate enough to have had the support of our College and our School to maintain a curriculum that allows for a very rigorous and sequential approach to the building of student skill and technical competency...as well as an incredibly multifaceted facility that offers our students the opportunity to become intimately familiar with a wide variety of glass making processes. However, all of these opportunities to build skill are really in service of something much, much bigger than just producing a program of sophisticated glass workers. Although we host a student body who have committed to a chosen material, at the heart of our educational motives is the intention of developing a visionary group of informed and versatile artists.
I believe that innovation is what’s at the heart of contemporary craft practice…and it’s certainly a key component to what our Glass Program is all about. Our value for the material’s history, it’s traditions, and techniques is not to follow the path of what’s been done, but to use it as a foundation of knowledge to support and facilitate the student discovery of something new…of something unseen…of something reinvented.
Aside from our responsibilities to facilitate the development of our Glass Majors, each faculty member is also required to spend 5 hours per week teaching an elective course designed for non-glass students in programs throughout the College and the Institute. These courses are designed for students who haven't experienced glass, but are approaching various modes of engaging with it in relation to their home studios/majors.
Without further ado, here’s my following response to your questions:
1. Does your program offer a class or classes in kiln-forming?
*For our Majors, 3 hours per week are dedicated to kiln forming instruction and integrated during the Sophomore I and II and Junior I and II glass experience. Depending on the ideas at hand, Seniors and Grads approach kiln forming within their thesis investigation independently, but not without faculty mentoring and guidance.
*For our non-majors, we offer two 3 credit hour course that incorporates a very introductory approach to kiln forming. The nature of the instruction and projects conducted in that studio are designed for elective students to translate elements of the work they do in their non-glass major within the context of glass/glass making.
2. Are your students interested in multidiscipline work in glass, or do they prefer to work in one area: i.e. only blowing, only kiln-work, only flame-working.
*For our Majors, it is often found that the versatility of our studios allows for some interesting intersections between unlikely studio cross-over in glass working processes. It’s a simple example to make, but the idea of kiln casting an object and bringing that object into the hot shop for further manipulation or assemblage illustrates the kind of glass-based hybridity that our facilities can host.
But there’s even instances of glass students joining up with other entities on and off campus to explore areas of glass interest in relation to other fields. For example, we’ve had glass students reach out to the School of Photography to explore interesting visual relationships between a cast glass object and specific light-based photographic imaging processes; we’ve had glass students reach out to the Mechanical Engineering program in the School of Engineering to fabricate customized tools/devices to integrate into their glass making practice or to machine mathematically sensitive sculptural parts to resolve a work; we’ve had students go off campus and form a relationship with students at the Eastman School of Music to compose a collaborative effort investigating relationships between sound, musical composition, and glass.
These few examples are used to illustrate that, yes, some students are interested in extending their glass investigation beyond a singular process, a singular studio, or even a singular discipline. However, it’s entirely dependent on the nature of the student’s curiosity and the kinds of questions s/he is asking that motivate the work.
3. Do you offer courses in flame-working?
*For our Majors, 3 hours per week are dedicated to flame working instruction and integrated during the Sophomore I and II and Junior I and II glass experience. Depending on the ideas at hand, Seniors and Grads approach flame working within their thesis investigation independently, but not without faculty mentoring and guidance.
*For our non-majors, we offer two 3 credit hour courses that incorporate a very introductory approach to flame working. The nature of the instruction and projects conducted in that studio are designed for elective students to translate elements of the work they do in their non-glass major within the context of glass/glass making.
4. For blowing courses, what are your expectations for outside of class hot shop lab time; for beginners, and for advanced students?
*Our slots run at 3 hours a piece (and only available out-of-class to Glass Majors):
Sophomores: a minimum of 6 hours of personal time, 6 hours assisting per week
Juniors: a minimum of 6 hours of personal time, 6 hours assisting per week
Seniors/Grads: an option of anywhere from 3 to 9 hours of personal time per week
***************************************
Aside from all the hands-on elements of our Program, we feel that the educational value in what we’re doing to facilitate a healthy development of our students includes experiences not listed in the course catalog.
For example, us faculty have an interest in maintaining an international sense of community and one way we’ve done that with our students is by facilitating collaborative projects with universities in Japan and China. So far we’ve only had the opportunity of hosting these students from overseas here in studio; we are, however, working towards developing the opportunity to reciprocate that exchange by traveling with our students abroad in the near future.
Another example in how we attempt to further round out the educational development of our students is by hosting national and internationally based artists in our Studio Resident Program. Although providing space and facility for these artists to conduct their work, they, in turn, contribute heavily to the development of our students simply by working alongside them, seeking assistance from them, visiting their studios and/or facilitating influential conversations outside of the classroom. Whether in terms of glass making technicality, idea development and exploration, or exposing our students to a new cultural experience by simply being themselves, our Studio Resident Program has noticeable impact on our students’ learning experience …both directly and indirectly.
Lastly, we’re also quite proud of our Visiting Artist Lecture Series…an opportunity to bring in practicing artists (glass and non glass), museum curators, gallery directors, writers, art historians, and critics to interact with our students and provide supplemental information, outside perspective and new experiences to our curriculum.
Aside from what studios we have available and what techniques we’re bringing to the table educationally, these last thoughts are just a small indication of what more is at play with what our ‘teaching’ is attempting to accomplish; opportunities that are every bit as valuable as any course we offer, but off-the-books and in addition to an already robust glass curriculum.
With all the best from RIT,
David
David Schnuckel
Visiting Assistant Professor of Glass
Rochester Institute of Technology
davidschnuckel.com
My name is David Schnuckel and I have served as full-time faculty in the Glass Program at RIT for 5 years now alongside my colleague Michael Rogers. He is on sabbatical this year and, although he would be nothing more than happy to contribute to this conversation, I'm taking the opportunity to step in and speak on behalf of the both of us regarding the nature of our Program. Before dipping into your questions, it's important to note that the structure of our Program is significantly different than most…
Michael and I co-chair a glass program that is part of a School that holds a curricular legacy for its declared undergraduate and graduate glass majors to engage in 6 credit hours of glass-based learning at 18 total contact hours with faculty per week. We have a what we call 'the Major Days' for these students: to be in house every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday from 9am to Noon and again from 2pm to 5pm to take part in glass-based instruction designed and facilitated by the faculty all year, every year. What’s unique about our curriculum is that declared undergraduate glass majors enter the Glass sequence in the Fall semester of their Sophomore year and build an arsenal of knowledge term by term until completing their Senior thesis in the Spring.
Historically, our Program (and the School with which is belongs to) has felt strongly that our major students should have 3 full days of major studio involvement in order to gather and advance the necessary idea development skills and material engagement skills needed to establish our students' individualized artistic identity and an understanding of their own personal making practice. Each faculty member shares the preparations of course study for the Sophomores, Juniors, Seniors, first and second year graduate students. Each faculty member has 12 contact hours with the major students every week.
The mode of instruction includes the following:
-group lectures
-group demonstrations
-group and individual critiques of work
-group and individual discussions, reviews of studio and writing progress.
It's a lot of time to cover a lot of media-specific territory...approaching a wide array of glass making processes as well as approaching many, many relevant issues of conversation regarding contemporary glass practice within a larger context of contemporary art, craft, industry, and design.
We're fortunate enough to have had the support of our College and our School to maintain a curriculum that allows for a very rigorous and sequential approach to the building of student skill and technical competency...as well as an incredibly multifaceted facility that offers our students the opportunity to become intimately familiar with a wide variety of glass making processes. However, all of these opportunities to build skill are really in service of something much, much bigger than just producing a program of sophisticated glass workers. Although we host a student body who have committed to a chosen material, at the heart of our educational motives is the intention of developing a visionary group of informed and versatile artists.
I believe that innovation is what’s at the heart of contemporary craft practice…and it’s certainly a key component to what our Glass Program is all about. Our value for the material’s history, it’s traditions, and techniques is not to follow the path of what’s been done, but to use it as a foundation of knowledge to support and facilitate the student discovery of something new…of something unseen…of something reinvented.
Aside from our responsibilities to facilitate the development of our Glass Majors, each faculty member is also required to spend 5 hours per week teaching an elective course designed for non-glass students in programs throughout the College and the Institute. These courses are designed for students who haven't experienced glass, but are approaching various modes of engaging with it in relation to their home studios/majors.
Without further ado, here’s my following response to your questions:
1. Does your program offer a class or classes in kiln-forming?
*For our Majors, 3 hours per week are dedicated to kiln forming instruction and integrated during the Sophomore I and II and Junior I and II glass experience. Depending on the ideas at hand, Seniors and Grads approach kiln forming within their thesis investigation independently, but not without faculty mentoring and guidance.
*For our non-majors, we offer two 3 credit hour course that incorporates a very introductory approach to kiln forming. The nature of the instruction and projects conducted in that studio are designed for elective students to translate elements of the work they do in their non-glass major within the context of glass/glass making.
2. Are your students interested in multidiscipline work in glass, or do they prefer to work in one area: i.e. only blowing, only kiln-work, only flame-working.
*For our Majors, it is often found that the versatility of our studios allows for some interesting intersections between unlikely studio cross-over in glass working processes. It’s a simple example to make, but the idea of kiln casting an object and bringing that object into the hot shop for further manipulation or assemblage illustrates the kind of glass-based hybridity that our facilities can host.
But there’s even instances of glass students joining up with other entities on and off campus to explore areas of glass interest in relation to other fields. For example, we’ve had glass students reach out to the School of Photography to explore interesting visual relationships between a cast glass object and specific light-based photographic imaging processes; we’ve had glass students reach out to the Mechanical Engineering program in the School of Engineering to fabricate customized tools/devices to integrate into their glass making practice or to machine mathematically sensitive sculptural parts to resolve a work; we’ve had students go off campus and form a relationship with students at the Eastman School of Music to compose a collaborative effort investigating relationships between sound, musical composition, and glass.
These few examples are used to illustrate that, yes, some students are interested in extending their glass investigation beyond a singular process, a singular studio, or even a singular discipline. However, it’s entirely dependent on the nature of the student’s curiosity and the kinds of questions s/he is asking that motivate the work.
3. Do you offer courses in flame-working?
*For our Majors, 3 hours per week are dedicated to flame working instruction and integrated during the Sophomore I and II and Junior I and II glass experience. Depending on the ideas at hand, Seniors and Grads approach flame working within their thesis investigation independently, but not without faculty mentoring and guidance.
*For our non-majors, we offer two 3 credit hour courses that incorporate a very introductory approach to flame working. The nature of the instruction and projects conducted in that studio are designed for elective students to translate elements of the work they do in their non-glass major within the context of glass/glass making.
4. For blowing courses, what are your expectations for outside of class hot shop lab time; for beginners, and for advanced students?
*Our slots run at 3 hours a piece (and only available out-of-class to Glass Majors):
Sophomores: a minimum of 6 hours of personal time, 6 hours assisting per week
Juniors: a minimum of 6 hours of personal time, 6 hours assisting per week
Seniors/Grads: an option of anywhere from 3 to 9 hours of personal time per week
***************************************
Aside from all the hands-on elements of our Program, we feel that the educational value in what we’re doing to facilitate a healthy development of our students includes experiences not listed in the course catalog.
For example, us faculty have an interest in maintaining an international sense of community and one way we’ve done that with our students is by facilitating collaborative projects with universities in Japan and China. So far we’ve only had the opportunity of hosting these students from overseas here in studio; we are, however, working towards developing the opportunity to reciprocate that exchange by traveling with our students abroad in the near future.
Another example in how we attempt to further round out the educational development of our students is by hosting national and internationally based artists in our Studio Resident Program. Although providing space and facility for these artists to conduct their work, they, in turn, contribute heavily to the development of our students simply by working alongside them, seeking assistance from them, visiting their studios and/or facilitating influential conversations outside of the classroom. Whether in terms of glass making technicality, idea development and exploration, or exposing our students to a new cultural experience by simply being themselves, our Studio Resident Program has noticeable impact on our students’ learning experience …both directly and indirectly.
Lastly, we’re also quite proud of our Visiting Artist Lecture Series…an opportunity to bring in practicing artists (glass and non glass), museum curators, gallery directors, writers, art historians, and critics to interact with our students and provide supplemental information, outside perspective and new experiences to our curriculum.
Aside from what studios we have available and what techniques we’re bringing to the table educationally, these last thoughts are just a small indication of what more is at play with what our ‘teaching’ is attempting to accomplish; opportunities that are every bit as valuable as any course we offer, but off-the-books and in addition to an already robust glass curriculum.
With all the best from RIT,
David
David Schnuckel
Visiting Assistant Professor of Glass
Rochester Institute of Technology
davidschnuckel.com
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