Susan Shields

I am driven to inspire a life-long love of learning in all of my students.Motivation and emotion share the same (Ecclesiastical Catholic Church Latin) root: movere(to move). Thus, our primary duty as educators is to foster genuine student interest and engagement. Students see themselves and one another in my course which centers on decolonizing the field of art history. They are asked to write about and create imagery describing their personal DFC journey, their cultural traditions, and their feelings regarding "The American Dream." Through these and other hands-on activities, we focus on building student literacy, confidence, and autonomous creative problem-solving and critical thinking skills. I am blessed to briefly interact with such incredibly generous, industrious, intelligent, resourceful, creative, and optimistic individuals. These primarily first-generation college students are already beginning to transform the terrain of academia, as well as the professional work-world climate, beyond.