Statement for Diversity
I am originally from South Korea as an international graduate student in the Graphic Design MFA program at Maryland Institute College of Art 2005. I relocated to Chicago Suburb due to my partner’s job relocation in 2008. I started being aware of inequitable opportunities for minority students in America when I began teaching at Chicago State University. Chicago State University is a historically multicultural institution located in South Chicago. Most of my students were black and non-traditional students, not just high school graduates, but first-time college generation, students with labor-intensive part-time and full-time jobs, single mothers, Etc., They are highly challenged to succeed in higher education due to lacking support systems. I felt tremendous empathy toward their situations since I was an academic stranger in Midwest and a minority designer and faculty in a white-dominated academic area, graphic design. I was challenged to find supporting systems and social belonging in the predominately white-dominated professional society. Also, my students needed more equitable learning opportunities beyond college-level classrooms. For instance, my web design course started teaching how to use the Internet because the students lacked computer and Internet literacy. I was demanding perseverance to teach students who were not academically fully ready to pursue higher education. My graphic design education focused on building social and professional independence with critical thinking as a designer. The students were more engaged in graphic design, hoping to be independent with professional experiences and design skills.
My teaching experiences at Chicago State University seeded my vision as a design educator for community engagement and diversity at Chicago State University. In 2014 fall, I was hired as a tenure track Assistant Professor of Graphic Design and Web Design in the Communication Department at Valparaiso University in Northwest Indiana. It is a Lutheran institution founded in 1869. It is a regional tier 1 research institution, and 93% of the students are white. I proposed a new special topic class, Design for Social Changes, cross-listed among digital media, art, and communication. How to teach diversity to students in a predominately white private institution? I use graphic design to educate students about equity, diversity, and inclusion through diverse research methods, including literature reviews and interviews. The course consisted of group discussions to discuss what diversity is and how we could bring unity or inclusion through understanding diversity. The course worked with diverse issues, including diversity on campuses, sexual harassment issues on campus, Syrian refugee camps, and homelessness in Porter County, Ec. They were presented and exhibited through national conferences, the annual art students exhibition, and Martin Luther King’s Day at Valparaiso University. I co-founded the group Asian Female Scholars with Mary Szeto, a former law professor at Valparaiso University, currently at Syracuse University. It is a social group consisting of around 40 Asian female faculties in the Midwest, particularly where white populations relatively dominate in the academic world. The group provides regular workshops and social gatherings for mentoring, connection, networks, and resources such as pedagogical strategies for Asian female faculty to survive and succeed on US campuses. It has been held at Valparaiso University and Purdue University and has been virtually hosted since 2015. Now the group has regular meetings via Zoom during the pandemic. I plan to organize the conference for the group at the University of Wisconsin Madison with the budget approval. My project, Social Homelessness on US Campuses, brings awareness of people being isolated and marginal on US campuses, initially focused on Asian female faculty. It has extended to class projects for students in the course ART598 User Experience for Graphic Design in the Graphic Design program of the Art department at the University of Wisconsin Madison since 2018. The class design and develop mobile applications for students who may feel isolated and marginalized at the University of Wisconsin Madison. It has been presented and exhibited through SIGGRAPH, ISEA, ARTECH, IEEE GEM, CICA Museum, Web3D Conference, Etc.
My current grant application as a principal investigator is pending with the $124,000 budget from Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation, Madison, WI. It is an exhibition proposal to incubate Bicultural and Bilingual Visual Dialogue Between Korean and English with Korean American designers and artists with the Division of Diversity, Equity, and Educational Achievement and Global Engagement Office in the School of Education at UW-Madison. Teaching diversity in design education is very critical for the next generation. Future professional designers should understand diverse cultures to create inclusive visual communication, including graphic and interaction design. This spring, I was asked during my guest artist’s talk at the Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design. “If you may have a superpower, how do you want to use it? My answer was, “I want to make