Academic Dean

Dr. Ann Filemyr is the Academic Dean of the College at IAIA. A leader in curriculum design, she has more than twenty years of experience in higher education and four years as a non-profit arts organization director. She is also a poet and writer.

Her innovative curriculum design reflects values-based educational initiatives. She believes the purpose of education is to provide a structure for the acquisition of skills, attitudes, and knowledge for personal and social transformation.

Education

She holds a B.Ph. in creative and performing arts from Thomas Jefferson College of Grand Valley State Colleges, Michigan, an M.A. in English with an emphasis in poetry from the University of Wisconsin and a Ph.D. in environmental communications from Union Institute and University, Ohio.

Major Professional Activities

Dean Ann, as Dr. Filemyr is called on campus, has been trained as a peer evaluator with the Higher Learning Commission of the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools (HLC). She presented the IAIA ePortfolio assessment system at the HLC 2009 annual conference in Chicago. She led a faculty team in the development of core competencies and the redesign of learning outcomes assessment. The team attended the June 2010 New Mexico Higher Education Assessment and Retention (NMHEAR) retreat. She is also a member of the Board of Trustees of Southwestern College in Santa Fe.

Her key contributions over the past five years at IAIA include: attracting necessary funds and supporting the development of IAIA’s first certificate in business/entrepreneurship; founding the new media arts department and supporting its phenomenal growth; helping to start up the new Indigenous liberal studies major; attracting funds to begin a campus-wide program of fitness and wellness; and creating the first art history minor to strengthen both studio arts and museum studies degree programs.

In addition, Dean Ann led the development of the four-year degree programs to better prepare IAIA students to successfully enter graduate and professional programs; supported the development of a core general education program; strengthened the developmental studies program and better linked it to college courses; initiate high school outreach and offering courses off-site at high school campuses serving Native American students to strengthen their college readiness.

Her next goals are to assist IAIA in achieving accreditation for its first graduate program, the MFA in creative writing; prepare the college for its next accreditation visit in 2013-2014; and provide leadership and support for the development of educational technology and distance learning for the academic programs.

In addition to her commitment to higher education and faculty development, she continues her work in traditional healing and the role of women as healers. Recent conference presentations on this topic include the April 2010 annual meeting of the Association for the Study of Women and Mythology and the 2009 Council Grove Conference on Consciousness. She leads an herbal workshop for Native American elders as part of the annual Elders Day Gathering at IAIA.

She has completed a chapter on two traditional sacred female figures of the Anishinaabeg (Ojibwe/Chippewa), entitled, “Grandmother Moon and Old Woman of the Mists.” This will be published in an upcoming anthology.  She also co-edited the forthcoming anthology presenting Native American perspectives on Santa Fe’s 400th anniversary.

Prior to coming to IAIA in 2005, she was on the faculty of Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio for fifteen years. She served as Department Chair for cultural and interdisciplinary studies, as associate dean, and as interim dean of faculty/vice president. She has also taught Great Lakes Indian ethnobotany and philosophy in the Native American studies program at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, and she attended the first World Parliament of Indigenous Peoples during the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro. In 1994 she spent the summer at Zuni working with the Zuni Conservation Project on documentation and outreach. She is a poet and writer and has been twice nominated for the Pushcart Prize in Literature for her poetry.

Dean Ann was the founder and director of, “The Yellow Springs Community Environmental Health Project,” (September 2003-June 2005). She designed and directed a 2-year community-based action research project bringing together Antioch College students with residents of Yellow Springs, Ohio to complete an in-depth local survey on issues of health and the local environment. Her accomplishments included the newsletter, “Circle of Flourishing,” workshops, presentations, and a final report.

She was also founder and director, 2000-2004, of the “Antioch Summer Writing Intensive.” These month-long writing workshops focused on poetry, fiction and creative nonfiction.

In the years 1991-1994, Dean Ann was involved in “A Question of Survival: Environment and Development in the U.S. and Brazil” an independent media project. It culminated in a one-hour video documentary, which include footage of the international Indigenous Peoples World Parliament in Rio de Janeiro; the Green Cities Urban Forum in Curitiba; the Imprensa Verde (Green Press) Global Forum in Belo Horizonte; and The Earth Summit U.N. Conference on Environment & Development.

Selected Publications

Mabel Dodge Luhan House Writers Residency, Taos, NM, May 2003 “The Healing Power of Being Here,” in the on-line journal From the Field, eds. Michele Gibbs and George Colman, www.realoaxaca.com/from-the-field/winter2002.html
Skin on Skin, poetry chapbook, Star Fire Press, 2000.
Hedgebrook Women Writers Retreat Residency, Whidby Island, Washington, May 1999.
She Wears Many Masks, prose poems and collage, one-of-a-kind artist book in the exhibit, One Who Sees with a Wild Eye, Herndon Gallery, 1998.
My Home Planet, prose poems and photographs, one-of-a-kind artist book in the exhibit, Letters Home, Herndon Gallery 1996.
Making Theories; Building Alliances; Creating Change: A Multicultural Perspective on U.S. Women’s Lives (Mayfield Pub. 1998) eds. Margo Okazawa Rey and Gwyn Kirk, essay, “Loving Across the Boundary.”
Environmental Journalism Fellow, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI.May 1995
Greening the College Curriculum: A Guide to Environmental Teaching in the Liberal Arts (Island Press, NY 1995) eds. Jonathan Collett and Steve Karaskashian; co-authored chapter on “Media & the Environment” with Karl Grossberg.
Thinking, one-poem artist book in a limited edition of 100 copies, Vestige Press, Michigan 1987

Teaching Statement

“At IAIA, I believe our work as educators involves empowering our students to become active and engaged participants in shaping the future of their personal lives, their tribal communities, and the world. Learning occurs when we apply exquisite attention, the deep desire to know and understand, and our unique capacity to be transformed by what we learn.”