Recent art education graduate, Katie Ericson, is the newest GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) Education Fellow at North Carolina Museum of Art (NCMA). Ericson completed her degree online through the University of Florida's Art Education Online MA program in August. She earned a B.S. in Art Management at Appalachian State University in Boone, North Carolina, and has been living and working in North Carolina while completing the online program.
Ericson’s title at the North Carolina Museum of Art is the GlaxoSmithKline Youth and Family Programs Education Fellow. The GSK Fellowship is a grant-funded nine month-long fellowship that is offered every year or every other year in the education or curatorial departments at the North Carolina Museum of Art, based on the needs of the department at the time.
“The first three months of my fellowship will consist of researching, conducting surveys and focus groups to gather data on how the Youth and Family Programs at NCMA can be improved," Ericson said. "Then I will prototype a new program or educational resource, implement it and assess it in the spring.”
Ericson said she has always been interest in working in art museums and, prior to entering the MA program at UF, worked in exhibitions at the Turchin Center for the Visual Arts (TCVA) in Boone, North Carolina, and was an intern at the Mint Museum in Charlotte, North Carolina, in Family Programs.
During the MA program she also worked at a public charter school in Durham, North Carolina, that focused on child-directed learning, visual thinking strategies and arts integration, which translated well into a museum setting.
Research for her capstone centered on the initiation and implementation of the online studio art courses for high school students. The courses were organized by the museum and hosted through the North Carolina Virtual Public School. The ISSUU document she created can be viewed at http://issuu.com/kericson/docs/capstone.
“The fellowship is providing fantastic opportunities and bridges the gap between an internship and regular employment in museums,” Ericson said. “I am asked to apply my body of knowledge, as well as given the opportunity to learn more about museum programming along the way.”