KIRSTEN BUICK

When Kirsten Buick enrolled in the University of Chicago, she took the advice of her parents and set about to acquire a skill. She decided to learn Italian. Once she mastered that, she began taking Italian literature courses (taught in Italian), combining her new skill with a lifelong enjoyment of reading. "Through literature I discovered art," she says.

By the time she entered graduate school at the University of Michigan, Buick was committed to a career as-an art historian. During a six-month visit to Italy in graduate school, she began to ponder the pervasiveness of American culture overseas, by the time she returned home, she had decided to combine her three interests: Italian, the 19th century and art of the U.S. Her dissertation focuses on Mary Edmonia Lewis, an American artist who lived in Italy in the 19th century.

As she competed her dissertation, Buick worked full time as a museum educator at the Art Instate of Chicago, where she sharpened her teaching skills. Buick also discovered the benefits of presenting one slide at a time instead o f the traditional two slides. "I noticed that students can concentrate better and retain the artwork's significance," she says.

At the College of Fine Arts, where she is an assistant professor teaching American art, she enjoys the collegiality of the faculty and the dedication of her students. "They do all the reading and even talk in class," she says.

She looks forward to encouraging her students to look beyond conventional methods and approaches to studying art. In her own work, most recently, she has written a paper about the depletion of race in New England colonial portraits. And during the spring 2002 semester, she plans to offer a class on "unnatural history," which will explore the pathological body in the 19th and 20th centuries.

EUGENE DOUGLAS

By the time he was in graduate school at the University of California at Irvine, Douglas had turned his attention to teaching. Contrary to many of his classmates who were teaching so they could afford to pursue acting, "I had to act to pay for my teaching," he remembers. He lobbied his professors for teaching assignments, eager to learn the fine art of teaching actors. "I love to see the interaction and the follow-through on an idea." Douglas was one of UC-Irvine’s first graduates asked to teach there after earning his master's degree. He also taught classes at a children's theater in southern California.

Before joining the UNM faculty as an assistant professor, Douglas knew Albuquerque as the perfect overnight stop on the trip home to Oklahoma. Now it is home. He enjoys learning from senior faculty and collaborating with his colleagues in the Theatre and Dance Department to continually fine-tune their teaching methods to stay competitive, lively and innovative.

Douglas is completing The Actor's Checklist, a book to help acting students of all levels gain clarity with their craft. He also plans to write plays, which would debut at UNM, and, of course, to perform.