Join us for the Art Department’s Fall Open House! Get hands-on by creating ceramic tiles, hand binding your own art journal, and screen printing an exclusive Art Department T-shirt. Treat yourself to a hot fudge sundae bar as you explore our open studios and admire a showcase of stunning student artwork. Don’t miss this exciting evening at Arts West on Oct. 7, from 5:30 to 7:30!

The cohort of 2020-21 Sustainability Faculty Scholars includes:

• Keshia Wall, Assistant Professor of Performing Arts

• Hwayeon Ryu, Assistant Professor of Mathematics

• Douglas Kass, Associate Professor of Cinema and Television Arts

• Ryan Johnson, Assistant Professor of Philosophy

• Scott Hayward, Assistant Professor of Management

• Prachi Gala, Assistant Professor of Marketing

• Rob Elbitar, Lecturer in Marketing

• Caroleen Dineen, Assistant Professor of Law

During the application process, faculty scholars outline a course they would like to create or modify to include a sustainability component. The Office of Sustainability saw a robust response from across schools in this application cycle and are thrilled to have such a disciplinary-diverse cohort of faculty. Many applications included interest in and focus on the overlap between social and environmental challenges and the relationship between inequality, justice, and climate change. It truly requires a multidisciplinary effort to work on the daunting and complex environmental and social problems we presently face!

The scholars program is led by Samantha DiRosa, Faculty Fellow for Sustainability and Associate Professor of Art and Environmental Studies. Through a series of workshops faculty members are provided with support for course development, including relevant sustainability resources and pedagogies.

Applications to be a Sustainability Faculty Scholar go out every fall.  For more information about the program visit the scholars webpage at
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DiRosa is one of five artists to be showcased in the exhibition. 

According to a review in the  "Samantha DiRosa’s video seascape gazes across the Pacific from California to the Fukushima nuclear plant in Japan. At first, the vista seems peacefully detached from the catastrophe 5,069 miles away. But those aren’t ordinary clouds in the distance: The artist has created composite footage of hydrogen explosions at the power-generating facility, and the silent blasts become more conspicuous as the video progresses."   

The exhibtion is on view through July 12. 

Faculty applied to the program because of their interest in incorporating or enhancing a focus on sustainable principles and practices in their courses. Throughout winter term and spring semester, scholars will meet as a group, where they will be provided with relevant sustainability resources and pedagogies through a variety of unique opportunities such as speakers, workshops, field trips and article/book discussions. 

The program was developed by Professor Janet MacFall, chair of the Department of Environmental Studies; Michael Strickland, lecturer in English and director of the Center for Environmental Studies; Pam Kiser, Watts/Thompson Professor, professor of human service studies and Distinguished University Professor; and Peter Felten, assistant provost and executive director of the Center for Engaged Learning.

The program is facilitated by Samantha DiRosa, Faculty Fellow for Sustainability and associate professor of art and environmental studies, with assistance from the Office of Sustainability.

Applications to be a Sustainability Faculty Scholar go out every fall. For more information about the program visit the webpage or contact Samantha DiRosa.

Young Do Kim, Sport Management
Richard Blackmon, Engineering
Jen Dabrowski, Chemistry
Prudence Layne, English
Kathleen Stansberry, Communications
Sana Haq, Communications
Joyce Davis, Exercise Science

Faculty applied to the program because of their interest in incorporating or enhancing a focus on sustainable principles and practices in their courses. Throughout the spring semester, scholars will meet as a group, where they will be provided with relevant sustainability resources and pedagogies through a variety of unique opportunities such as speakers, workshops, field trips and article/book discussions. This year we are thrilled to have three first-year faculty members participating.

The program was developed by Professor Janet MacFall, director of the Center for Environmental Studies; Michael Strickland, lecturer in English; Pam Kiser, Watts/Thompson Professor, professor of Human Service Studies and Distinguished University Professor; and Peter Felten, assistant provost and executive director of the Center for Engaged Learning.

The program is facilitated by Samantha DiRosa, Sustainability Faculty Fellow and associate professor of art and environmental studies, with assistance from the Office of Sustainability.

Applications to be a Sustainability Faculty Scholar go out every fall. For more information about the program visit the  or contact Samantha DiRosa.

Each year students in Associate Professor Samantha DiRosa’s ART 339 Eco-Art course create immersive art installations on current environmental problems for the Elon community. This week marks the first of four projects in the Arts West “Living Studio” (the greenhouse near Scott Studios/Human Resources). “Inside Dakota” by students Melanie Intriago, David May and Sarah Midolo addresses the complexities of the Dakota Access Pipeline via an interactive game/simulation.  

​During your participation, you will experience the perspective of various stakeholders, and perhaps learn a little more about this issue, which arguably affects us all.

Open hours are 9 a.m. to 6 p.m.– 6 through Friday, April 14. 

Utopia may be simply interpreted as a place where current problems are resolved or transcended, or as an imaginary state of social or cultural perfection. Dystopia, conversely, may be seen as an imaginary state of pure awfulness, or perhaps the real and ultimate conclusion of our current anthropocene.

Ideas about utopias and dystopias have long been of interest to artists working across media, popularized by writers of fiction and challenged by critical theorists. Lately, utopias and dystopias are everywhere in films and on social media, as the national political and cultural landscape continues to fracture and diverge along disparate visions. Artists in this exhibit explore these themes through a variety of media and  interpret the theme broadly, exploring personal, cultural or political dimensions. 

The video piece by DiRosa is a meditative montage, combining original footage from Cowell Ranch Beach in California, which sits on the same latitude as the Fukushima nuclear power plant, and broadcast footage of the hydrogen explosions and subsequent meltdown that occured after the 2011 Tsunami.

In Elegy, DiRosa brings together fragments of several diverse bodies of work created over the last five years (Mapping Meg Ryan, 37.421467˚, and Elegies from the Medical Terminology Study Card Set).  From these bodies of work, and included in the exhibition, are re-photographed sequences of somewhat awkward gestures from Meg Ryan films, appropriated video and re-worked scripts from threshold moments of these films, photographs and writings from my pilgrimage to the California coast (the same latitude as Fukushima, Japan), broadcast stills of the Fukushima disaster, and finally, medical flash cards with burned-out lines of text, contained within glass and displayed sentimentally as if on mantels.  In these seemingly disparate pieces tensions exist between reality and fantasy, presence and invisibility, and hope and despair.  Like a stutter—or series of stutters–the mind jumps around and emotional states are in flux.  Elegy utilizes a structure of visual haikus (the symbolism embedded in the number three intentional), in attempt to bring poetic form to these stutters––to bring order to randomness, and to resolve the absurd alongside the momentous.  The exhibit runs through July 22.  

Please join Associate Professor Samantha DiRosa’s Video Art and Animation students in a one-night only art event this week in Gallery 406.  On Friday evening October 30th, from 5:00-6:30, a series of projections and sounds of looped commonplace gestures and actions will be showcased in the gallery, located in Arts West.  This brief exhibition of projected and deconstructed repetitive acts will surely inspire stimulating conversation about the ordinary and everyday.  

Halloween-inspired cupcakes and other goodies will be provided during the reception.