The University of the Arts is pleased to announce the recipients of the 2021 Remarkable Faculty Awards such as Aggie Ebrahimi Bazaz for Fantastic Junior Faculty Award in Investigate/Inventive Action, Raffi Besalyan for Fantastic Senior School Award in Research/Imaginative Activity and Katherine Cunningham for Superb Instructing Award. These awards realize the exceptional accomplishments of the faculty and their outstanding motivation to our college students, as properly as their initiatives to elevate the arts at Ga Point out College and past.
Each individual recipient is nominated and selected by their friends in accordance to sturdy conditions, which considers publishing, exhibiting, presenting and undertaking among the other scholarly and inventive contributions to their industry.
“These school have distinguished by themselves both of those in their inventive practice and their dedication to providing the maximum high quality education and learning to their students,” explained Dean Wade Weast. “We are confident these awards will be followed by numerous other folks in their occupations.”
Aggie Ebrahimi Bazaz – University of Film, Media & Theatre, Assistant Professor, Film Generation
“Outstanding Junior College Award in Investigation/Resourceful Activity”
Aggie Ebrahimi Bazaz is an award-successful, Iranian-American documentary artist, author, and educator. She acquired her M.F.A. in Film and Media Arts from Temple University and her M.A. in Multicultural American Literature & Women’s Scientific studies from the College of Ga. Her local community-engaged creative tactics concentrate on immigration, diasporic identities, belonging, Freirean praxis and crucial examinations of the ways in which documentary can uphold units of oppression, even as it claims to challenge these kinds of techniques. Her get the job done involves VR/360° documentary activities, reside participatory performances, installations, multi-system collaborations—any variety conducive to contributing nuance to ongoing dialogues close to equity and social justice. Bazaz’s movies have been revealed internationally at film festivals, together with Slamdance, Encounters Movie Competition, CAAMFest, Atlanta Film Pageant, Indie Grits Movie Festival and her the latest film, “How to Explain to a True Immigrant Story” (2019) was the 1st-ever VR movie to be programmed in the Pardi di Domani shorts levels of competition at the Locarno Intercontinental Film Festival. She is co-producer for the feature-duration film, “La Casa de Mama Icha,” directed by Colombian director Oscar Molina, which premieres nationally in the US on PBS’s POV documentary series in Oct 2021.
Raffi Besalyan – University of Audio, Affiliate Professor, Piano Functionality
“Outstanding Senior College Award in Study/Resourceful Activity”
Dr. Raffi Besalyan is an award-successful recording artist and has toured North and South The united states, Europe, Russia and Asia, carrying out in such prestigious venues as Carnegie Corridor and Merkin Hall (New York City), Kennedy Middle (Washington D.C.), Orchestra Hall (Chicago), Atlanta Symphony Hall, Max M. Fisher Audio Center (Detroit), Moscow Conservatory’s Rachmaninoff Corridor and Maly Zal (Russia), Izumi Corridor and Phoenix Hall (Japan). Among the his levels of competition awards are major prizes gained from the Josef Hofmann International Piano Levels of competition, Artists Worldwide Competitiveness, the New York Frinna Awerbuch International Level of competition and the MTNA Countrywide Piano Opposition. A native of Yerevan, Armenia, Besalyan examined at the Tchaikovsky Unique Songs School for Gifted Small children. He received his Bachelor’s, Master’s and Physician of Musical Arts degrees from the Yerevan Komitas Condition Conservatory as a pupil of Sergey Barseghyan. He gained an added Grasp of Music diploma from Rowan College under Veda Zuponcic and studied at the Manhattan College of New music with legendary American pianist Byron Janis and Sara Davis Buechner. His reports at the Moscow State Conservatory incorporated classes with Alexei Nasedkin, Victor Merzhanov and Naum Shtarkman. In July 2021, Besalyan will debut his most recent album, ”The Audio of Black & White: Music of G. Gershwin, A. Khachaturian and O. Levant,” a loving tribute to A. Khachaturian, a towering figure from the artist’s indigenous Armenia, and to G. Gershwin, the musical genius from his adopted house, the United States.
Katherine Cunningham – Ernest G. Welch University of Artwork & Layout, Lecturer, Photography
“Outstanding Instructing Award”
Katherine Cunningham is a lens-centered artist, writer, and educator. She received a B.F.A. in pictures from Washington College in St. Louis, with time abroad at Goldsmiths Faculty, University of London. She went on to get an M.F.A. in images from The College of Notre Dame, exactly where she was awarded the Erfroymson Fund Rising Artist Award. In 2011, she attained an M.Mus. from the Royal Conservatoire in the Hague, the Netherlands having participated in an interdisciplinary method known as ArtScience. Her curiosity about the entire world and passion for artwork-generating has led to varied ordeals, from photographing girls’ universities in Cairo, Egypt to operating on augmented truth with the prestigious V2_Institute for the Unstable Media in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. Cunningham has exhibited and posted equally nationally and internationally.