Name: Michelle "Liv" Livek Garner
Title: Assistant Professor of Fine Arts
Education: Ph.D., Art Education, University of Missouri, Columbia; Educational Specialist,
University of Missouri, Columbia; M.Ed., Art Education, University of Missouri, Columbia;
B.S., Art Education, Culver-Stockton College
Office: 244 McLaurin Hall
Phone: 803/323-3237
E-mail: livekma@winthrop.edu
Area(s): Introduction to Art Education, Curriculum in Art Education, Secondary Art Education
Methods, Elementary Art Education Methods, Art Education Internship, Media Arts and
Technology in Art Education, Assessment and Policy in Art Education, Research in Art
Education, and Ceramics
Dr. Michelle Livek is currently an Assistant Professor of Fine Arts, Art Education in the College of Visual and Performing Arts. While attending the University of Missouri — Columbia where she completed her Ph.D., she was invited to develop a graduate course in art education assessment and policy. This invitation was the result of her investigations into assessment practices and policy enactments in arts education.
Livek's art education teaching career consists teaching grades K-5 and 9-12 for nine years, graduate and undergraduate art education, research and fine arts courses, community career center enrichment courses, and for various community based art leagues.
As an art education leader, she became a HeART Program Recruiter and Representative, Missouri Art Education Association division representative and mentor for pre-service teachers and teachers in their first five years, and the School for Art Leaders Cohort with the National Art Education Association.
Her current research investigates the ways Artist/Teachers make sense of educational policies that are written for tested content, and yet, they are expected to comply. She has found that Artist/Teachers utilize their aesthetic, artistic sentimentalities to become policy bricoleurs and entrepreneurs that re/dis/locate policy. The research, in method, data and analysis, is in service of practicing Artist/Teachers, to embolden them with their expertise and to make visible the intellectual agility they possess.
As a social practice art/influence, she participates in Civil Engagement art making experiences. Most recently, at the 2017 National Art Education Association convention in New York, she presented a social practice influence with the artist/teachers. The TouchStones Project, a social practice influence developed by Livek, has been implemented nationwide.
Livek has presented her research and pedagogical theories regionally and nationally and is an invited Keynote speaker for the Florida Art Education Association.
