Two graduate students here at the UNM Art Department are being honored with the Susan Deese-Roberts Outstanding Teaching Assistants of the Year Award! This award recognizes and rewards the teaching achievements of graduate students. Congratulations to both Kenton Bueche and billy von raven for earning this award. Both are graduate teaching assistants at the Department of Art, within the College of Fine Arts.
billy von raven states the following about this award, “I would not be here today without the love and support of too many people to name here. I want to express my sincere gratitude to Jennifer Pollard and Magdalena Vázquez Dathe at CTL and my graduate chair Szu-Han Ho, among many other teachers, colleagues, and students. Education is about caring for each other and lifting each other, and it happens more often than not outside the classroom.” raven’s work is seen below and is included in their thesis project “Glitches in the Fabric.” It is a 12.5’ x 3’ woven music score (wool, cotton, and synthetic yarn), 2025.
Kenton Bueche states the following about this award, “I’m deeply grateful to Magdalena Vazquez Dathe at the Center for Teaching and Learning, whose ‘Teaching for Graduate Students’ course helped me reflect on and strengthen my approach to teaching. I also want to thank Meggan Gould, Welly Fletcher, and Dr. Marcella Ernest, whose generosity in sharing their relational teaching philosophies has had a lasting impact on mine. And I’m thankful for my students, graduate cohort, and all the professors I’ve learned from at UNM, who have shaped the way I now structure my courses. I was a teacher before I was an artist, and I hope to continue holding both roles together.”
Congratulations again to both of these incredible graduate assistants. Your passion for teaching and dedication to your students and practice truly inspire us all. We are so thankful to have such thoughtful, talented educators in our department.
![The UNM College of Fine Arts celebrates Dr. Gigi Schroeder Yu @gigischroederyu, Assistant Professor of Art Education, for her outstanding scholarship, leadership, and impact in the field of art education✨
In 2023, Dr. Yu published “Affirming the Rights of Emergent Bilingual and Multilingual Children and Families,” exploring how Reggio Emilia’s philosophy supports social justice and linguistic human rights for multilingual children, especially immigrants and refugees.
In 2024, she brought the “Mosaic of Marks, Words, Material” exhibition from Reggio Children, Italy, to Explora Museum and co-led the North American Reggio Emilia Alliance Conference, focused on “Advocating for the 100 Languages as an Educational Right.”
She also received an NEH grant for the Summer 2025 K–12 Educator Institute at UNM: Reimagining the US/Mexico Border through Multimodal Storytelling.
Dr. Yu’s recent publications:
“The Language of Collaboration” (Nov 2024, Arts Education Policy Review), on cross-disciplinary inquiry in early childhood education.
“A Collection of Children’s Artworks as Imaginative Openings” (Feb 2025, International Journal of Art & Design Education), featuring a student-curated exhibition of children's art from Latin America and beyond. Dr. Yu quoted, “Unusual [it is]... to consider children's artwork as a form of inquiry... much of what they can reveal about society from the child's perspective is often overlooked.”
Dr. Gigi Schroeder Yu’s scholarship, leadership, and dedication continue to elevate UNM’s Art Education program and enrich our broader educational and cultural community. Congratulations Gigi!!
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