Letter to the Public from Ceramics Area Head, Shoji Satake

By now you may have heard or seen the news about the massive cuts at West Virginia University. I fear this is symptomatic of greater underlying issues attacking the arts nationwide. I’m convinced what is happening at WVU is the beginning. As the news broke nationally, I’ve heard from many friends and colleagues that their universities and colleges are in a similar predicament of “academic transformation”. The proposed cuts to thirty-two undergraduate and graduate programs at West Virginia University (WVU), nine percent of majors, and sixteen percent of full-time faculty (169+ full-time faculty positions slated for termination) have focused mostly on the humanities, liberal, and creative arts. They recommended that ceramics, printmaking, and sculpture be eliminated as areas and discontinue Art History. These draconian cuts will affect all our schools in art, music, and theater as well as other valuable programs at the university.

Ceramics plays an important role in art, culture, and civilization. In ceramics’ 30,000+ years of continuous history, it is one of few things that humans have ever invented that is truly archival. Ceramics is a story of who we are and is an intangible part of human culture. Ceramics allows us to connect with our past, present, and future. Without going into much detail, in addition to what we normally think of as art school lessons in theory and art history, I’ve applied my learnings in chemistry, math, geology, critical thinking, critical writing, archeology, anthropology, engineering, construction, programming, etc. in my teaching and studio practice.  

Morgantown, where I teach and call home, was founded as a pottery town. It was one of the earliest post-colonial potteries west of Appalachia. Founded in 1785 by John Scott, Jacob Foulk, John Thompson, and Francis Billingsley, Morgantown was a major pottery center in the Monongahela Valley producing salt-fired crockery. This grey-ware cobalt slipped salt-fired crocks were created in towns like Morgantown, New Geneva, Greensboro, etc. mimicking the blue and white porcelain from China and shipped upriver on stern wheelers, like the ones piloted by a young Samuel Clemens who learned to Captain in our area, to Pittsburgh and then down the Ohio River to towns like Cincinnati, Louisville, and down the Mississippi far away as New Orleans.

Our classes are full of art majors. The School of Art enrollment is near our historic high from 20 years ago. We had the highest freshmen enrollment class in 10 years in the School of Art this fall. The School of Art has had robust enrollments to the point we can’t facilitate any more students. It’s the other areas of the university that never met the university growth projections that are hurting everyone as well as wasteful capital projects, etc. Bear in mind the arts have continued to occupy a 50+-year-old building that is antiquated which has forced us to rent space off-campus. What is also troubling is that as they eliminate many programs throughout the university and merge our college with Journalism, they are proposing to shift programs like fashion design, etc. to the School of Art which will increase our enrollments with fewer faculty. 

What shocked us was that ceramics, printmaking, and sculpture were not among the initial areas to be reviewed. The argument currently by the administrators is that all the schools were under review regardless of whether the areas of emphasis were listed. They plan to reduce our school of arts faculty from 22 to 15. The school of Art has more students than the school of music and the school of theater, yet we are being asked to eliminate as many or more faculty than the other 2 schools. My director went as far as to propose that we use our endowments to self-fund the school’s budget so it would not cost the university a dime but that fell on deaf ears as well.

I believe the Arts are an integral part of any education, but most notably part of the human experience especially as an education at West Virginia’s R1 flagship land-grant university. The mission of WVU is to create “a diverse and inclusive culture that advances education, healthcare, and prosperity for all by providing access and opportunity; by advancing high-impact research; and by leading transformation.” As a land grant university in a poor state, many of the students in WVU’s ceramics department are first-generation college students from rural West Virginia. Many of the graduates stay and work in the state and help grow WV’s economy and cultural wealth. One of our former BFA students broke a five-generation cycle of working the coal mines to become an established well-known sculptor in the state.

When I first arrived at WVU 17 years ago, I asked my intro classes if any of the students had clay experience in high school and one student raised their hand. I found out from a study that there was only one Art Education Teacher who had concentrated in Ceramics in the region. Today, we have over two dozen Art Ed Teachers in the state and SW Pennsylvania that have graduated from our program. Last week, when I asked the same question about clay experience in my intro class, 2/3 of the students raised their hands that they had taken ceramics in high school. WVU Ceramics has graduated countless successful alums too many to name that are currently active in the field as studio artists, faculty, gallery owners, designers, etc. WVU Ceramics has also facilitated numerous international artists and helped springboard many successful careers through the WVU China Ceramics Program. 

With the help of my current and former colleagues, Boomer Moore, Jen Allen, Shalya Marsh, and Kelly O’Bryant, the WVU ceramics program has offered diverse special topics classes that are of tangible importance to anyone earning a BFA/MFA. These include, but are not limited to kiln building, local clay and glaze chemistry, mold making, ceramic history, figure modeling, etc. We have the only dedicated 3D Ceramics Printing and Ceramics Production Methods Program academic lab in the country where we teach our students designs and skills used by industry. When the students come to the realization that a hydraulic RAM press, a jigger jolly, and or a 3D Resin Printer is another tool like a pottery wheel or a slab roller, it opens their creativity to an infinite world of possibilities. 

Started by my visionary predecessor, Bob Anderson, WVU has the oldest study-abroad program to study in the famed porcelain capital of Jingdezhen, China. We have continued to expand programming in China and have taken countless students and visiting artists to study for short-term summer and fall semester programs. For many of our students, this is the first time on an airplane traveling to a foreign country. Just imagine a student from rural West Virginia who has never been to a large city and the first city we land in China is the 26-million-person city of Shanghai! The learning that travel has on our students is as profound of an experience they will have during their time in school. If these cuts are implemented, we plan to run one last trip this summer to China.

WVU Ceramics works to donate at least 500 bowls per year to help raise money for the Mon County Empty Bowls project. The department even hosts an annual bowl-a-thon where anyone from the community can come in and help make bowls for the cause. From funds raised in our bi-annual pottery sales, we support free workshops/demonstrations/lectures to the public throughout the year, fund student trips to NCECA Conferences, provide summer student scholarships to attend workshops and support the China Ceramics Program. In our tenure at WVU, the ceramics program has ranked in the top 20 ceramics graduate programs across the nation but what is more important is that the students’ lives have been positively impacted by our program. 

West Virginia University’s Ceramics program works in partnership with organizations like Manchester Craftsman Guild in Pittsburgh, which inspires urban youth creativity, learning, and personal growth through the arts in higher education and provides scholarship opportunities to attend the university. The first recipient of the William E. Strickland scholarship, a young woman of color who graduated from Pittsburgh Public Schools, completed her BFA degree at West Virginia University has received many accolades, and has been named one of the emerging artists in Pittsburgh.

The initial proposal to eliminate Ceramics, Sculpture, and Printmaking areas of emphasis will be detrimental to exposing future art students’ mastery of the craft which is defined as a comprehensive knowledge of a subject. The tactile learning that happens in the studio specific to these mediums cannot be replicated online or in lectures. Mastery happens in the process of artmaking. Studies have shown that oxytocin hormones are released into our bodies as we touch material like clay impacts our brains. The creative process of artmaking positively heightens our somatosensory, motor, and visual areas in ways that passive learning cannot. As one student commented last week, what is an art school without these programs? 

My colleague and friend, Lisa DiBartolomeo, whose entire World Languages, Literature, and Linguistics Program is slated for elimination stated, “I don’t think anyone is ever really prepared to lose their job, no matter where they work, but academics might be even less prepared than most. And I honestly thought I was safe…” and I felt the same way. As the endowed professor in art actively exhibiting internationally and overseeing a nationally ranked ceramics program with the oldest China Ceramics Study-abroad program and the only fully dedicated 3D Digital Ceramics/Production Methods lab in the nation, I naively believed that the 17 years that I dedicated my life to improving the quality of education to our students would be recognized and not punished. Attempts to qualify our research, student successes, and core values of our land grant mission seemed to not matter. My friend the sculpture professor who has dedicated 35+ years of her life to teaching, mentoring, and leading our school now faces termination rather than a retirement party because this flawed process has decided to quantify and de-personify the process into a business decision. The community we have spent years building which reaches far beyond the reaches of our town and our state will be impacted by these decisions.

Since the news broke about the budget crisis and the drastic measures that are now being proposed at WVU, I want to thank all of you students, alumni, friends, colleagues, and strangers who have reached out to offer support and help. You have reaffirmed what we do matters, and that art matters. What is happening at WVU unfortunately is not isolated and I’m afraid it will continue as the educational policies and priorities begin to shift in an era where publicly funded universities continue to receive less and less support from state legislatures. In the meantime, please spread the word and continue to keep the focus on these draconian measures that are affecting the arts. 

If you care about WVU Ceramics, Printmaking, Sculpture, and Art History, please write an email, tweet, text, or post wherever and everywhere. Please also consider signing your name to the following petition.

https://chng.it/Rjhc9mtYTH

Written by Shoji Satake

Shoji Satake is the J. Bernard Schultz Endowed Professor of Art and Ceramics Area Coordinator at West Virginia University. He is a Japanese-born, American Artist/Professor and the incoming President of the National Council on the Education for Ceramic Art (NCECA). He is also a member of the International Academy of Ceramics. He resides in Morgantown, WV with his partner/potter Jen Allen and their two children.