PNCA’s Senior Associate Dean Kate Copeland was recently selected as a Fulbright Scholar Alumni Ambassador, for which she’ll serve as an official representative of the program at selected events for faculty across the country. Her own Fulbright Scholar grants took her to India in 2013 and Belgium in 2022, where she created artwork and explored pedagogical models in collegiate art education that continue to inform her work at both PNCA and Willamette.
During her first Fulbright Scholar grant, Copeland created artwork and taught workshops on alternative photographic processes in the Graphic Arts Department of Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda, India. During her second grant in 2022, she led workshops in the Printmaking Department of Royal Academy of Art in Antwerp, researched collegiate mergers, and served as an artist-in-residence at Industriemuseum in Ghent.
“Both of these experiences were transformative and life changing,” Copeland says. “Being an Alumni Ambassador is my way to give back by sharing this opportunity with others.”
Copeland leads strategic thinking, planning, and operations related to curriculum, teaching, and learning at PNCA, while teaching in the Photography and Printmaking Departments and is enthusiastic to give back to the scholarly community in this role.
As an Alumni Ambassador, “I’ll be traveling around the country and sharing my personal stories with people who have some sort of disciplinary similarity to me,” Copeland says. She adds that she hopes to “inspire people to apply for Fulbright themselves.”
The role complements Copeland’s dedication to mentoring students as they pursue their own Fulbright opportunities. Copeland serves as the Fulbright Program Advisor for students at PNCA, as well as the Fulbright Liaison for Willamette University. In her student-facing role, she provides informational sessions for students and advises them through the application process for the Fulbright U.S. Student Program.
“My Fulbright experiences have changed the way that I think about creative development, they’ve improved the quality of my teaching at PNCA, and they’ve provided me with the space and time to make artwork,” Copeland says. “Thanks to the faculty and students I met in India and Belgium on my Fulbright grants, I bring more criticality and global perspective to the pedagogical practices we use at PNCA.”
