December 18, 2024
The January council election is coming up! There are two positions on the ballot that represent AIA Societies on the AIA Governing Board (see Council packet for candidate slate and all bios). Get to know your candidates:
Dawndria (Dawn) Cox
Teacher, Cesar Chavez Middle School
Current AIA Public Education Liaison – Executive Board, LA Chapter
Candidate Bio: I have worked in Lynwood Unified School District for over 20 years and now currently teach at Cesar Chavez Middle School in Lynwood, CA. I serve as the Public Education Liaison on the Executive Board of the AIA-LA chapter. For the past 2 years, I have worked in collaboration with the American School of Classical Studies at Athens (ASCSA) and the Jessie Ball duPont Fund. I helped to develop a program for high school students to travel to Greece. This summer education program was intended for underserved youth and their teachers to introduce students to the archaeology of ancient Greece while likewise providing teachers with guidance in designing lesson plans for bringing archaeology into their classrooms. The inspiration to create such a program was from experiences such as studying abroad in Florence, Italy in college. While abroad, I traveled to 25 different countries, including Norway, Malta, and South Africa. In addition to her travels, I have been working in association with Dr.
Georgio Buccellati’s (UCLA) Mesopotamia Project, which connects children around the world with international pen pals through the means of online technology. I hope to use my personal knowledge to reiterate state standards in history lessons that focus on archaeology. Teachers and students can be helped and made aware of the history that is connected to archeology. This will also encourage school districts to support archaeology as a supplement to history.
I earned my B.F.A in addition to degrees in both Theater and Art History. I have a M.A in Curriculum and Instruction, and Ed.D in Educational Leadership and Management. I was awarded the William Scarborough Fellowship from the ASCSA and was previously allotted a teaching fellowship by Earthwatch, an educational conservation group, that supported her studies in the West Indies.
Nancy Serwint
Associate Professor and Program Director of Art History, Arizona State University
Candidate Bio: I am honored to stand for the role of Society Trustee. I have been a member of the Archaeological Institute of America since my graduate student days, and as a university professor and field archaeologist working at various sites in the Mediterranean, archaeology has been my career focus…and the passion of my heart. Having excavated and worked in the Athenian Agora, ancient Corinth, and Morgantina, my research has centered on terracotta sculpture resulting in opportunities to research and publish the coroplastic material from Tell Halif (Israel) and Carthage (University of Michigan-University of Georgia excavations). Since 1983, I have been working at the ancient sites of Marion and Arsinoe on the northwest coast of Cyprus and currently serve as acting director of the Princeton University Cyprus Expedition. The cache of 30,000+ fragments of votive terracotta sculpture from the site continues to keep me and a cadre of students immersed in assessing the corpus from various perspectives. My publication track has focused on coroplastic topics that treat manufacturing and technical strategies, diffusion of cultural and stylistic influences, gender issues and dedications, and the confluence of religious belief and cult practices in multi-cultural environments. Our local Central Arizona chapter of the AIA is a vibrant one, and as president of our group, I work with our other officers to configure a lecture program that engages our membership in the breadth of archaeology, not only with the Mediterranean world, but also regionally in the Southwest. As a Society Trustee I will contribute my enthusiasm, experience, and intellectual curiosity in bounty.
