NTID Artist/Professor Wins Outstanding Teaching Award

From: NTID - Jul 31, 2006

Contact: Karen E. M. Black
karen.black@rit.edu
585-475-6840


NTID ARTIST/PROFESSOR WINS OUTSTANDING TEACHING AWARD

ROCHESTER, N.Y., JULY 31—Rochester Institute of Technology honored Paula Grcevic of West Henrietta with her second Eisenhart Outstanding Teaching Award. The decision of a committee of students and faculty peers was announced recently at the Annual Eisenhart Celebration reception.

“Professor Grcevic employs tremendous attention to detail and seamlessly manages lessons, masterfully interweaving a wide variety of media. She focuses considerable attention on ways to teach art to deaf students with greatly varied modes of communication,” said Eisenhart Committee Co-Chair and RIT faculty member Lorna Mittelman.

Grcevic’s methods include exercises involving the senses. Rather than simply looking at and painting still life compositions, Grcevic has her students touch and smell the natural materials, transforming resulting ideas and memories into art pieces.

“I guide the students through their artistic experience, moving them beyond English language and environmental barriers, the frustrations of heavy academic workloads and the learned responses of judging and critiquing their work,” said Grcevic, assistant professor of arts and imaging studies for the National Technical Institute for the Deaf.

Grcevic’s involvement and service to community also contributed to her selection for this coveted award, endowed in honor of the late RIT trustee M. Herbert and wife Elsa Bausch Eisenhart. When she is not teaching or creating her own art she is co-founder and consultant Deaf Artists Web www.rit.edu/deafartists, co-director and artistic design director Rochester Deaf Film Festival, guest curator for various exhibits at the NTID Joseph F. and Helen C. Dyer Arts Center.

NTID is the first and largest technological college in the world for deaf and hard-of-hearing students. One of eight colleges of RIT, NTID offers educational programs and access and support services to over 1,100 deaf and hard-of-hearing students from around the world who study, live, and socialize with 14,400 hearing students on RIT’s Rochester, N.Y., campus.

Web address: http://www.rit.edu/NTID

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