Faculty couple to create professorship in liberal arts
Just as two paintings of the same subject can look radically different, depending on the artist’s perspective, cross-disciplinary scholarship can shed new light on familiar subjects. Supporting interdisciplinary learning is at the heart of a new gift from two OSU art professors.
Henry Sayre and Sandra Brooke have pledged $1 million to establish an endowed professorship in liberal arts.
“I’ve spent my entire career at OSU and the university has indulged me by letting me teach all over the curriculum,” said Sayre, a distinguished professor who has also achieved success as an author. “My Ph.D. is in English, but I’ve taught art history and written about performance art, and that broad background is what we hope to capture through the endowed chair. Students have always appreciated the fact that lectures can be broader than one discipline.
“This pledge is our way of giving something back – to the students and the university.”
Sayre is perhaps best known for his art appreciation text, “A World of Art,” and for his production of a multimedia teaching package for art appreciation. His new six-volume textbook series on the humanities is in production.
Brooke is an assistant professor of art and an accomplished painter. She has been in two national juried shows this year, and her work is currently being exhibited in a solo show at Willamette University. She has been serving as a student adviser at the OSU-Cascades Campus in Bend, where she and Sayre work.
Read the press release about the Henry Sayre and Sandra Brooke Professorship in Liberal Arts
