Assistant Professor, Art Education
Rachel Zollinger is an interdisciplinary artist, educator, and scholar hailing from the shadow of the Zuni Mountains of New Mexico. Her research interests explore multispecies and emplaced pedagogies in relation to science, environmental, and art education practices, with emphasis on ways of inhabitation and knowing. Her creative and scholarly output ranges from drawing, mixed-media sculpture, digital media, site-specific installation, socioecological performance, and writing media, as well as teaching. Rocks, roots, rivers, grasses, and lichens are among her aesthetic and methodological tendencies.
Rachel earned her PhD in Art and Visual Culture Education with a minor in Science Education from the University of Arizona, a MFA in Interdisciplinary Art from Sierra Nevada College, and a BFA in Studio Art from the University of New Mexico. She has worked extensively in community spaces, museums, and other informal learning sites developing and facilitating arts integration curricula and environmental education programming. She currently serves as an editor for the International Journal for Education Through Art and as an associate editor for the interdisciplinary plant studies journal Plant Perspectives. She is a co-founder of Submergence Collective, an art and ecology research group.