IMAGE DESCRIPTION: Five adults seated around a table with assorted pens and notepads smile and laugh. The room they are in is brightly lit and mostly white, with tall open windows.
CAPTION: Some of my graduate students in my Access and the Arts seminar, an introduction to accessible practice in cultural organizations and my favorite class to teach. Sometimes I am funny. Photo by Margaret Ferrec for the Arts & Humanities Department of Teachers College, Columbia University.
Teaching is one of my greatest professional passions.
Across the globe, I’ve taught graduate students and undergraduates; in academic degree programs and professional ones; in museums, workshops, and more traditional classroom settings. Regardless of context, I find that no matter how well I understand an idea or method or set of questions, learners give it new life and meaning through our engagement.
I began my professional life in museum education; the field later became the empirical investigation of my initial research program. My time in museum ed has also strongly guided my teaching philosophy. Because museum programs are by nature episodic – an hour-long tour, a drop-in artmaking workshop – educators often receive very little information about their groups in advance. For this reason, the best practice in museum teaching is to design for all: to develop program formats inclusive of diverse backgrounds and to maintain a broad array of “tools in the kit” to draw upon situationally, depending on learning context and learner needs.
This universal design approach aims to produce products, environments, and experiences accessible (and thus valuable) to everyone, regardless of age or ability. As an educator, I seek to apply these professional principles to my teaching by structuring experiences designed for diverse learning styles and incorporating diverse perspectives.
My core domain areas for teaching include:
Accessibility & Inclusion
Diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility (DEIA) work in the non-profit sector with a focus on cultural organizations, inclusive of: legal compliance and obligations under the law, accessible programming and audience engagement strategies, and the policy and practice of building inclusive partnerships with patrons with disabilities.
Making Art Worlds Accessible, taught online (this version) and in person at Teachers College, Columbia University
Data Monitoring & Program Evaluation
Methods-focused training on data monitoring and program evaluation. Emphasis on evaluation design (with focus on identifying goals, outcomes, and indicators); interview and survey-based evaluation methods; qualitative coding; and effectively presenting findings and recommendations.
Data-Driven: Introduction to Arts Assessment, taught online (this version) and in person at Teachers College, Columbia University, spring 2021)
Research Methods & Training
I have more than a decade of teaching experience mentoring students through independent research projects. For Teachers College, Columbia University, I also co-led end-to-end implementation — including ideation, remedial evaluation, instructor training, and summative design — for designing a new capstone curriculum for professional master’s degrees in arts administration. This culminated in a two-track option where students could choose either a traditional academic research thesis or a portfolio project. The syllabus for the portfolio option drew on cutting-edge management training in strategic planning, financial planning, stakeholder evaluation and research, and marketing pitches of project deliverables.
Cultural Policy
Foundations of the third-party funding model for American cultural policy, debates around the public interest, censorship, and evidence-based policy assessment. I’ve taught this content both as a semester-long elective (at Teachers College, Columbia University) and also as two-day online module on American cultural policy in global context (the latter for Accademia Teatro alla Scala, Milan, Italy).
For more information about workshop and seminar facilitation opportunities I can offer you or your organization within these areas, check out this page on my work as a consultant.
Gemma Mangione 