"When we codify, we run the risk of losing innovation. That's why you see so many technical companies now hiring artists, because the opportunity to include problem solvers that potentially think differently. Innovation and creativity go hand in hand. There's no question about it. As members of society, we have a responsibility to leave the next generation better off than we found it, and I think we run the risk of losing that capacity by homogenizing and standardizing." -Dr. Stephen Immerman
KnowAtom CEO Francis Vigeant discusses the connection of art to science, technology, engineering and math in K-12 classrooms with special guest Dr. Stephen Immerman, president of Montserrat College of Art in Massachusetts.
• Beyond aesthetics: What is art?
• Why STEM educators are welcoming art and calling it "STEAM"
• How art education can leverage science and engineering practices
• Where you can get involved in the national movement from STEM to STEAM
Francis Vigeant: Hi, and thank you for joining us for this exciting discussion about the connection between STEM and the arts. I'm Francis Vigeant, CEO here at KnowAtom. Thank you for joining us.
Just to kick off our discussion, I'd like to let you know a little bit about what KnowAtom is, and also why we're talking about art if you're not familiar with it.
KnowAtom is an organization where educators that are focused on science, technology, engineering, and math, and helping specifically public-education classrooms not only meet the needs of policy, but really focus on creating a space where students are able to create, evaluate, and analyze simultaneously by putting them in the role of scientist and engineer and engaging them hands on as scientists and engineers on an everyday basis.
Why we're talking about art is really to consider that crossover between STEM and the arts, which many are now calling STEAM, because we know, especially under the next generation science standards, that we have an actual definition for science and engineering and the nature of the relationship between science and engineering. That being scientists really seeking to ask questions and solve them through the use of experimentation, and engineers seeking to use that knowledge to solve problems. I think what's often overlooked in this relationship is the role of communication and in the role of how that communication helps scientists, helps engineers, and really accelerates this sort of STEM cycle that we see.
Our special guest here today is Dr. Stephen Immerman, president of the Montserrat College of Art in Beverly, Mass. Steve has an interesting background that crosses art, science, and education. Prior to his current appointment as president of Montserrat College of Art in 2009, he served 30 years at MIT, where he was an active and celebrated member of the MIT community.
Among his many accolades, Steve received the MIT Excellence Award and was elected as an honorary member to the MIT Association of Alumni. His most recent role at MIT was as senior associate dean for student development. Steve holds a Doctor of Education from the University of Pennsylvania, certificates in leadership from MIT, and management from Sloan School of Management at MIT, a Master of Science and Education from the University of New York Albany, and a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology from the State University of New York Potsdam.
In 2015, our present Massachusetts governor, Charlie Baker, appointed Dr. Immerman to the Massachusetts Cultural Council. He also serves on many community and national boards, including the Board of the Massachusetts Creative Network Commission, and the Association of Independent Colleges of Art and Design.
We're really honored to have Dr. Immerman here with us to discuss the deep connection between the next generation of scientific thinking, and the role of art as we consider what it means to shift from STEM to STEAM. Steve, thank you very much for joining us.
Dr. Immerman: You're very welcome. I'm happy to be here.
Francis Vigeant: I think to get our discussion going, I have a couple shots of MIT, the MIT Dome and Simmons Hall that looks a bit like a cross between a snip of code, and almost a piece of a robot or something. It's art and science, but, can you tell us a bit about how your time at MIT connects to your role now? How it led you to be part of this art community?
Dr. Immerman: Oh, thank you very much. Thanks for having me, and that's a really great way to start the conversation.
A lot of my work at MIT was involved in institutional change — large-scale problem solving. As MIT evolved quite dramatically from when I first I got there, which was a… it was a, relatively speaking — you know, it's still MIT — but relatively speaking, it was a domestic engineering school, and became, really, a major international science and engineering university. In that time period, of course, I had the opportunity to interact extensively with the scientists and engineers, and really was immersed in the culture of the university, but also was immersed in the science, and the politics, and the strategy of institutional change, which always fascinated me.
In that same time period, I also was involved fairly extensively in the arts, mostly around the edges, because it's not necessarily as essential as some other things at MIT, but very much, and saw the connections quite clearly about the process of how artists conceived and execute their work, and how engineers and scientists do their work. There weren't appreciable differences, and we can talk about that at some length later, if we choose to. When the time came to leave MIT, as a product, aside from the time I spent trying to figure out what I was good at, and trying to figure out how not to lie to myself about that, and what really filled my soul, and trying to make sure I wasn't over-romanticizing that, it became evident that it wasn't so much about what I needed or wanted, but rather — for lack of a better way of saying it — who needed me as a product.
This wonderful gem of an art college in Beverly, Mass. was poised and had a board ready to, and a faculty and a staff, ready to want to take on some pretty substantial change, and so it was good fit. Just, on the technical side, it was a good fit, but the real substance of the fit was the culture, and the values, and how people treated each other, and how they cared about the students, and the personal individualized attention that students received to have a transformational educational experience. That was what really drew me. You're going to work hard no matter where you are, but if you have a place that you can apply your efforts that also aligns with your values, you've hit the jackpot.
That's how we got to Montserrat from MIT.
Francis Vigeant: That's great. So, Montserrat College of Art is a four-year residential college —
Dr. Immerman: Correct.
Francis Vigeant: — of visual art and design, right. You have a very attractive student-teacher ratio; I think it's something like four to one. I mean, as a resident of the North Shore, myself, I have an opportunity to pass by the college often, and, I mean it as a compliment when I say, I've come to know Montserrat's reputation as a college of choice, and really as an artist's college, in a sense. I know that one of the things that's talked about often is about creating an environment for creative risk taking. How do you do that at Montserrat College of Art, when you are talking about this kind of community and values that bring you all together?
Dr. Immerman: Well, most independent art colleges have a strong culture of critique, and it is constant. It's constant feedback, but that critique, because so much of an emerging artist's — what they bring to the table — also has to do with them finding their voice, and getting themselves grounded. It's not just about the tools. You can learn the tools almost anywhere. As a matter of fact, that's one of the great fallacies that folks that think they're not artistic, you know; you've heard people say, "I can't draw a stick figure." The truth is everybody can. It's because people draw what they think they see, rather than what they see. Learning how to see is one of the base attributes of the freshman year experience at Montserrat.
That culture of critique almost, by definition, has to be executed in a way that's not personal, because you're bringing so much of who you are to the table while — as late-adolescent and traditionally aged student populations — while folks are trying to, students are trying to discover who they are and what they want to say. So, the maintenance and the fueling of that critique culture in a way that is professional and is helpful, and supportive, and provides feedback, in combination with that faculty-student ratio, allows us to be very personal and to maximize the potential of every student.
That culture is largely persevered and maintained by our faculty, and so our greatest responsibility is, when we hire a faculty member, to make sure that they are people that are willing to invest in that culture and share the same values.
That's kind of how it happens. Allowing the student to find themselves to work, and rework, and rework, just like the experimental method. To go over and over and over again. Studio practice, undergraduates involved in studio practice, spend enormous amounts of hours producing every day. Whether the muse strikes or not, you have to crank it out. That iteration, with feedback, creates an environment that makes it much safer to be able to make mistakes and to see what happens. Through that process, solve problems, visual-communication problems, and see what works, and eventually you get your feet under you to be able to use the tools in ways that are much more facile, and, consequently, can solve much more complex visual communication problems. Does that make sense?
Francis Vigeant: Makes perfect sense. When we last spoke, you told me something that changed my thinking forever. I doubt you had any sense that this sort of transformation happened for me.
Dr. Immerman: I got to be careful what I say.
Francis Vigeant: You have to be real careful. Somebody just might run with it. You said, "Art is engineered communication." That changed my thinking entirely about what art is.
Dr. Immerman: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Francis Vigeant: I would consider myself to be somebody who was a fan of art. I saw value in it, but I don't know I really saw value in it until you made the statement. I was wondering if you could expound a bit on what you mean by engineered communication, because you've been talking already about this idea of solving visual communication problems.
Dr. Immerman: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Francis Vigeant: What does that mean, engineered communication?
Dr. Immerman: Sure, sure.
You think about what folks, stereotypically, think about in terms of an engineering problem: a bridge or a building. To oversimplify it, the language and the technology is a lot of math and a lot of physics that help you do the analysis that breaks the problem down into parts, typical engineering or scientific approach, which is analytical, and therefore solve some kind of a problem that has to be solved, in the — let's call it in the physical environment, or in the bio technical environment, same kind of a thing. The process is exactly the same in art; it's just that there's a different tool kit.
Let's… before we get into the tool kit, let's just remember, let's remind ourselves that everything that you encounter in your life is designed by somebody with some sort of intent to solve some sort of a problem. I sometimes use this example when we have an open house and parents are here, and, with some trepidation, they're wondering what their son or daughter is going to do with an art degree. I say, "Tonight — this may be oversimplified, but tonight go home and open the refrigerator, and just look at how much art is in your refrigerator. The labels on the products, the designs of the packaging." Everything that you encounter. Look around your office space, those that are listening online. The chairs, the colors, the wall, the lighting, all designed by somebody who had some intent, that problem that needed to be solved.
We all drive cars. They all work exactly the same way, more or less, some have some features that some don't, but basically they all work the same. Why'd you buy the car you bought? Might have been a price point, but, on average, we've fallen in love with the design of cars and what it communicates visually. Instead of physics and math, we use line, and shape, and form, and value, space, and color, and texture, and rhythm, and balance, and emphasis, and on and on and on and on and on.
It is taking what it is, either your own idea that you want to communicate, using that tool kit to engineer a message, or, as a commercial artist, you're taking somebody else's problem that they want a solution to, and providing a set of engineered solutions that allow whatever message that they want to deliver to be executed and delivered. It's far more technical and far more intentional than I think a lot of the general public may, stereotypically, think when it comes to their idea of artists — you know, the lone artist sitting in the garret painting some sort of abstract image that... Art is everywhere. Every TV show you watch, every magazine you open, every commercial that you see, every webpage that you encounter, your cell phone with embedded video, photography, graphic design, illustration, user experience, user interface design — all of it done by an artist somewhere, someplace.
It's very much engineered; it's just a different toolkit than what we typically think about in terms of engineering.
Francis Vigeant: I love your example of different cars, because that was something I was thinking about the other day, in terms of, at any given price point for a vehicle, you have different options, but you typically have more than one option. Often times if, even among if you were to picture luxury vehicles, at a particular price point, perhaps, you could pick a BMW, or you could pick a Mercedes, or you could pick any number of particular luxury vehicles. They're all so differently designed, but really designed to communicate something to the buyer, or maybe perhaps the buyer may use it as a symbol of something that they value as well. Which —
Dr. Immerman: Clothing does that in massive kinds of ways.
Francis Vigeant: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Dr. Immerman: People, why'd you wear what you wore this morning? There's certainly utility, and that utility has importance, but that utility is also designed into it, but on large part, we dress in ways that are trying to deliver a message, either who we are or what we want to say.
Francis Vigeant: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yeah, that's interesting. I'd not thought about clothing. Thinking about that, you mentioned about the freshman experience, thinking about the transition from students coming from K-12 —
Dr. Immerman: Yes.
Francis Vigeant: — art experience, to freshman college art experience and how you have now this culture of critique, and, also, this definition of engineered communication. Do you see or sense a readiness gap in, particularly, maybe the areas of what art is, or the risk taking when it comes to the pool of potential applicants?
Dr. Immerman: It would be hard to generalize, because, in the first instance — and again, this is, again, on average — but in the first instance, students that intend to go to independent colleges of art and design that are studio based, are a self-selecting population. Sure, there's always gaps to be filled, because everybody comes with different preparation, different skills, and a lot of times students are not hugely educated about the options of alternatives — the multitude of options and alternatives — that are available to them post-graduation. There certainly is a preparation issue, but we screen for that preparation issue in the application process, which is not wholly different, but enough different than the normal application process to be able to hedge your bets on readiness.
Let me just talk about —
Francis Vigeant: Sure.
Dr. Immerman: — how we do it here. Almost all colleges of art and design require a portfolio. In a portfolio submission, which is fairly extensive, there's an opportunity to interact with the individual. Believe it or not, we know all our students before they're admitted. We've sometimes had several conversations with them, maybe more than one portfolio review. We've seen them in high schools, high school classroom, and, like I said, they tend, on average, to self-select.
What we're looking for is we're looking for, first of all, do they have the passion and the will to commit the amount of work that it requires to get through art college? I couldn't have done it as an undergraduate. These students are six hours of studio a day plus, then, a liberal arts class, and then they've got homework, and most all of our students also have part-time jobs. Part of the portfolio review is, do they have — have they had enough training and ability and will they be able to sustain the effort that is going to be required to produce the level of work that studio based EFAs require?
The second is, obviously, academics. Because of our earlier conversation, it's intuitive to us, but not to everyone, that art is mostly about ideas. Do they have the capacity to be able to manipulate ideas, and to research ideas, and to be able to write about ideas? If you cannot write, you really cannot succeed anywhere. If you can't tell your own story, you can't tell somebody else's. Are there basic attributes and basic capacity to engage the level of writing and the level of intellectual discovery that you have to do in concert with your studio practice?
The final, to cap it all off, is how do those things come together in attitude? Are they willing to fiercely commit themselves to this practice? Which, there are a certain number that get here and decide this isn't for them, because it is so much work.
Sure, there are gaps, but that's kind of the stock and trade of what's going on in K through 12 these days, but, because of the application process, on average, we're able to screen for those gaps in ways that relatively mitigate deficiencies. Every person comes with different skill sets, and so everybody — because the foundation here is, at all independent colleges of art and design is fairly similar — there's the opportunity to have folks catch up. In that context, because it's individually delivered, we are able to, again, individually design education path for each student consistent with their own strengths and weaknesses.
This, to me, is the way education should be done. It's highly inefficient. A lot of pressure, financially, to standardize, but as long as I'm here and as long as I think, Montserrat and other art colleges believe what they believe, there will be a great emphasis on that individual approach to education.
Francis Vigeant: Mm-hmm (affirmative). It's interesting —
Dr. Immerman: Long answer to a short question, sorry.
Francis Vigeant: No, it's… that was a good answer, though. The, that culture of critique, especially in ways that aren't personal, but something that is more one-on-one, you can see how, that's not something that lends itself to automation.
Dr. Immerman: Right. Right.
Francis Vigeant: For lack of a better term. It's interesting, too: You mentioned the importance of writing and ideation, if you want to call it that, and the ability to tell a story, and intellectual curiosity, and the ability to sustain research in that discovery process. I think about English Language Arts, which we always refer to as K-12 educators, but that 'arts' piece that's on the back of it, I think, sometimes gets a little lost, especially as we — I think myself, an elementary-educator context — where we're trying teach students the basics of reading and writing.
Dr. Immerman: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Francis Vigeant: There's so many canned reading and writing programs that we don't necessarily think about something written as reflecting the author's life and experience and views, and then, perhaps, I wonder if that is something that follows in that experience a little bit further for students as well, such that it's possible to have something that we call English Language Arts, but, perhaps, forget that that — back to your point of engineered communication — that that's something that's written to make a statement, hopefully.
Dr. Immerman: Sure.
Francis Vigeant: Yeah.
Dr. Immerman: Those of us that are addicted to reading, it's all… recreationally, it's either about the story, or it's about the form. It is a very technical vocation to be able to write, and to write effectively, and, more importantly, to be able to write in a way that communicates.
You think about advertising, and you've got a 30-second spot, and somebody had to write it. You know it when it works, and you know it when it doesn't. That's storytelling. The narrative is so central to all art and all design, that you have to think about it first in terms of the words, especially if you're going to be in commercial decision or commercial arts, you're going to negotiate your deals by words. You're going to get your instructions by words. You're going to get feedback by words. It's central; it's critical to the process. Like I said, the narrative, we are born storytellers, but if we remember that something like, if I remembered it correctly, something like 60% of your brain is dedicated to tasks associated with vision. Some may be processing, may be hand eye coordination, that kind of thing, some 30% just in processing visual information. It's enormous part of who we are and what it means to be human.
The extent to which, then, we have to — because language is also wired, hard-wired — we have to try to make meaning. It is impossible for us not to try to make meaning. We are meaning-making animals, so it is constantly that interaction of the visual and the meaning making. The meaning making is all defined by words. If you don't have a word for something, you don't know what it is. It's just wired, hard-wired in. That's why we have whatchamacallit's and whosiwhatsit's and whatshername's. You have to have a word for it to be able to understand it. Those two things are tied together inextricably.
Francis Vigeant: I think, too, oftentimes — from an educational standpoint in the K-12 classroom — we're often under pressure from testing or scheduling or IEPs, there's so many different elements to juggle multiple disciplines and everything.
Dr. Immerman: Yeah.
Francis Vigeant: That can almost become a focus on what we're doing. We need to read 10 pages a day, or these 15 vocabulary words, or something like this.
Dr. Immerman: Yeah.
Francis Vigeant: Maybe in an art context, the what is oil on canvas, or a particular stone sculpture, or medium, I guess, is what I'm saying, but that idea is, it sounds like, is the why. Then, it's — thinking about this in the context of what you were saying with communication on the job and everything else — it's not just what you say; it's how you say it. That how is that bridge between the idea and the actual, I guess, expression of it in the end, is that correct?
Dr. Immerman: Yeah. Well, you just oversimplified — you just described the last thousand years’ debate on what makes art good. From Aristotle to the present. At least, what I've read, it starts with the actual physical object and how well it's executed and what we commonly agree to as standards in the quality of that execution, and then the second part is, what does it say? How does it communicate? Of course, nowadays, you have to add on who says it's good.
Francis Vigeant: One of the pieces I wanted to ask you about is something that is, Pablo Picasso's “Guernica.”
Dr. Immerman: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Francis Vigeant: That not, maybe, the fine-tuned what's behind it, but really, I wanted to ask, since everybody has heard, by and large, of Pablo Picasso, and has seen “Guernica” in some form, some place, how would a piece like that fit into this definition of art as engineered communication?
Dr. Immerman: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Well, I think we all know it was intentional, his creation of that painting was intentional to describe the horrors of war. It has a vocabulary that is what we today recognize as Pablo Picasso. I'm reminded of… For those that haven't seen his early work, that he was trained as a very traditional artist. Most people think of his cubism and the very abstract stuff that was popularized, but for those that haven't experienced his early work, they really ought to take the opportunity to look at the depth and breadth of his talent and the numbers of experiments that he went through from a very early age to his, to what we think about him today.
It's all based in the same strong, traditional training to get to the level of expression that that painting exhibits. The colors that he chose, the images, the violence, the edges, the symbolism of the Nazis, and so forth, in the painting, all toward the end of him trying to deliver a message, and, in some ways, probably dealing with his own horror, his own internal angst about the art, so it very much, as a focused piece of expression, is engineered communication. Very intentional. At the same time, very powerful, in terms of the emotional content. Yeah, it's a classic example, and, of course, there are thousands and thousands of equally classical examples.
Francis Vigeant: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Dr. Immerman: Some of which are because we've lost the language of some of the older paintings. We don't know what the symbolism means, that were quite contemporary at the time, in terms of their symbolic content, right up to ones where we are much more familiar with what the symbolic content is and how do you make sense out of it. Of course, the more you learn about it, the more the paintings, or the artworks, have meaning and have a richness of meaning and depth of meaning as you become more... It's just like a person knowing about music. The more you know about it, you hear differently. The same thing with art: The more you look, you see differently.
Reminds me of a story. I tell this to first-year students. I was, I don't know, in Basel or someplace, it doesn't really matter to the story, and my wife and I were walking through a museum that was filled with late works of Picasso, and I'd kind of had my fill. I don't mean to be jaded or sound jaded, but I've kind of had my fill; I'd seen enough. I turned a corner, and there was one of his early works, one of the absinthe drinkers that he had done; this one was the one in green. It was so strong and so emotional and so powerful, it literally nearly dropped me.
The point of the story that I tell is that it's important to keep looking. It's important to keep open, and keep experiencing, a