COVID-19: MECA RESPONDS TO A

COVID-19

MECA RESPONDS TO A daunting challenge

In the spring of 2020, as the dangers of the COVID-19 pandemic crisis began to emerge, Maine College of Art’s leadership had to move quickly to assure that the safety and needs of our students, staff, and faculty would continue to be met under rapidly changing circumstances. It also became clear what a truly vital role the arts play during a time of crisis. President Laura Freid said, “During an international crisis, artists are very well-equipped to respond. We at MECA, along with the rest of the world, have found ourselves in a completely unique and different situation where access to our facilities is not an option. So we have been providing temporary, creative, effective solutions to fulfill our mission to deliver a world-class arts education to our students. When the scope of the COVID-19 pandemic became evident, it propelled us forward into a future we had in some ways already envisioned.”

Steps were immediately taken to increase information flow and implement precautions, including announcing an extended Spring Break. During those first crucial weeks it became apparent that our facilities would need to close to the public; events would need to be canceled, postponed, and/or reenvisioned; all but essential services would need to be shifted to remote management; and the remainder of the semester would need to be conducted online.

STUDENT SUPPORT Administrators and faculty worked together tirelessly to triage and build a system that would allow all undergraduate and graduate classes to successfully continue remotely as well as provide critical student support services.

It was a tremendous undertaking in a short time, but it enabled our students to complete their spring semester and our seniors to graduate at the end of May. In conjunction with those efforts, MECA’s Artists at Work and Alumni Relations staff added components to our website to provide access to national and local resources, tools, and opportunities such as artist relief funds, business help, and peer projects. They also continued to provide ongoing remote professional development and career services and advice.

MECA had previously identified eLearning as one of the five core priorities of our new Strategic Plan (2020-2025). Because of our smaller size and student-to-faculty ratio, MECA was able to remain nimble and focus on keeping students at the center of our mission.

#mymecacommunity

Through our #mymecacommunity social media campaign and other digital strategies, we have been sharing and broadcasting videos and work from the MECA community despite being physically separated from one another. Sharing how our students, faculty, alumni, and others were creatively responding to limitations and difficulties not only brought our community together, it strengthened it.

PROJECT MACGYVER Project MacGyver, collaboratively designed by MECA’s Foundation faculty, was one example of rising to the challenge through a unique approach.

Named after the fictional television characters Angus MacGyver and his friend Pete, who used tools and cleverness to deal with difficult and often dangerous situations, the project took the core elements of MECA’s Foundation Program and applied them to a culminating capstone project on how to produce work in times of adversity. Associate Professor and Program Chair of Foundation Philip Brou mailed out 145 material kits consisting of colored sheets of paper, straws, molding clay, pencils, pens, glue, and other materials to all 12 classes of Foundation students. Class instructions provided prompts to develop imaginative ways to use the materials. The work that the students shared was astonishing and impressive. Watching students adapt, create work stations in their remote locations, and resume classes online has been a reminder of “how amazing our students are!” complimented Brou. “It has been humbling and inspiring to talk to them. Our students are strong, like diamonds! They are ready to work and continue to be a part of our MECA community, even from afar.”

ADAPTING TO ONLINE LEARNING Araminta Matthews, MECA’s new Associate Dean of Graduate and Professional Studies, has broad experience in instructional design, technology integration, and digital curation and was a critical part of our COVID-19 Academic Response Team.

“Academically speaking, the current challenge to our faculty is that we’re now presented with an international crisis,” Matthews said. “This provides an opportunity to reimagine our practice. How that changes or impacts our experience of looking at art is yet another topic to explore.”

Together with our marketing department, MECA was able to pull off an incredible feat by creating a user-friendly, full-service conduit for our students to fulfill their academic requirements using software that is universally available to faculty and students through Google Apps for Education. Matthews said, “Our advice to faculty has been: don’t try to replicate your face-to-face methodology in digital space. Ask yourself what you can do online that you can’t do faceto-face. What does this new online capability offer you that you can capitalize on? How can this new tool refocus your academics and amplify one’s artistic vision?”

Seth Rogoff, Assistant Professor of Academic Studies, who has been teaching remotely since 2013, said, “I’m really impressed by MECA’s response to the need to shift its programs online for the remaining part of the spring semester. This is a massive challenge -- and the school has set up procedures and standards that will ensure quality while still allowing each professor to find one’s own way. I have huge confidence in my fellow faculty in this regard. Everyone is working really hard to deliver education that meets our collective standards.”

Many of our MFA students and alumni already had experience with remote learning. Gina Siepel MFA ’08 shared her thoughts in a Facebook post: “In the midst of all the uncertainty and life-and-death concerns of the moment, I’ve been feeling a little daunted by the process of rapidly moving my three studio art classes to a remote format. But recently ... I had a very helpful realization. I’VE ALREADY DONE THIS! ... I’m thinking of all the remote work we did in between the on-campus intensives, and the skills it helped me hone, including the cultivation of a disciplined and self-directed practice, the intentional building of artistic community, the documentation and presentation of my work, and how to have an effective remote studio visit with mentors. As a practicing artist, I have relied on these skills and the mindset of flexibility they helped foster. . . right now, I’m grateful for the model this experience provides me as a teacher navigating a genuinely challenging moment.”

1. The work-from-home space of Steve Drown, Coordinator of the Bob Crewe Program in Art & Music 2. Pilar Nadal MFA ‘13, Adjunct Assistant Professor, Printmaking 3. Scenes from MECA’s second Virtual Accepted Students day

President Laura Freid said, “More than ever the world needs creativity and artists to bring us together, remind us of what is truly important in our lives, and inspire the hope we all need. If anyone suggests art is not critical, just ask them to think about what life would be like in quarantine without the art, music, poetry, movies, animation, and literature that we are all now sharing with each other.”

Note: In early summer, MECA purchased Canvas, a robust Learning Management System. Faculty training is underway and beginning in the Fall 2020 semester, students will have access to a fully developed and optimally designed course delivery system, in addition to planned in-person classes. This effort was supported in part by a grant from The Davis Educational Foundation, established by Stanton and Elisabeth Davis after Mr. Davis’s retirement as chairman of Shaw’s Supermarkets Inc.