The National Urban Arts for Impact Network is led by Co-Founders Sandra Bowie and Kathi R. Levin. The National Urban Arts for Impact Advisory Council is comprised of leaders in education and arts education who provide guidance in the development of the direction and management of this Network. The Advisory Council will be officially appointed in the Summer of 2013.
Sandra Bowie, Executive Director for Arts Education, National Urban Alliance for Effective Education
As Executive Director for Arts Education at the National Urban Alliance for Effective Education (NUA), Sandra Bowie designs and leads arts education programming and advocacy for one of the leading and most innovative urban teaching and learning models in the country. The Pedagogy of Confidence, the approach used by the NUA has joined forces with Arts for Impact, Sandra Bowie’s arts learning strategy for urban adolescent students to program arts education as a mediation strategy and as an integral part of NUA’s approach and methodology in urban schools. Ms. Bowie also co-founded the National Urban Arts for Impact Network, as a function of her work with NUA.
Prior to NUA, Ms. Bowie served as Vice President for Arts Education at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center (NJPAC) from 2008 -2012. She led one of the leading arts education programs in the country. NJPAC’s wide-ranging arts education programs include performances for schools and families, in-school residencies, arts training, and community partnership programs based on Ms. Bowie’s Arts for Impact Strategy. NJPAC’s partnership with Newark’s Central High School and other schools in the greater Newark area, supported by New Jersey School Improvement Grant funding, has embedded the performing arts in middle and high schools through its social justice curriculum
Ms. Bowie served as Managing and Administrative Director, within the senior leadership team in the Department of Drama at Tisch School of the Arts, New York University, from 1999-2008. Ms. Bowie has served on the faculties of Yale University, New School University’s Master of Science in Teaching Program where she also served as Associate Program Director and served as faculty and administrator at Howard University in the Department of Theatre where she was a tenured senior faculty member and Director of the Acting Program. A professional actor for twenty years, Ms. Bowie has performed for stage, film and television and is the recipient of The Helen Hayes Award for Outstanding Performance in a Musical. She received the New Jersey Governor’s Outstanding Administrator Award in 2010 and the John J Pappas Recognition Award for dedication and service to arts education in New Jersey. She is a member of the Advisory Board for the National Black Theatre Network, and on the Advisory Board for Newark Arts High School, and is a founding member of the Newark Arts Education Roundtable. As an advocate for equity in arts education, Ms. Bowie is an active member of the Arts Education Partnership and Americans for the Arts. Ms. Bowie received her Master of Arts in Acting from Illinois State University and Bachelor of Arts in Theatre from South Carolina State University.
Kathi R. Levin, Executive Director, National Urban Arts for Impact Network
Kathi R. Levin is co-founder and serves as Executive Director of the National Urban Arts for Impact Network. A long-term national leader in arts education, Kathi R. Levin manages a portfolio of strategic initiatives for the National Art Education Association (NAEA), the professional association for visual art educators and is the Program/Development Officer for the National Art Education Foundation, the grant-making affiliate of NAEA. Her current projects include representing NAEA on the leadership team for the National Coalition for Core Arts Standards (NCCAS) updating the national arts standards and providing support for the NAEA Research Commission and the Platform Working Group, which develops the association’s position statements on a variety of arts and education issues. She is a member of the Arts Education Legislative Working Group, a coalition of national association leaders
that identifies opportunities for furthering arts education in federal policy and appropriations. Ms. Levin served as co-manager of the development of the 21st Century Skills Arts Map for the Partnership for 21st Century Skills. She serves on ASCD’s College, Career and Citizenship Readiness Coalition (formerly the Well Rounded Education Coalition) and represents NAEA at meetings of the Whole Child Initiative Partners.
Additional clients have included the Ohio Alliance for Arts Education, the New Jersey Performing Arts Center (NJPAC) and the Los Angeles County Arts Commission. Her work with the Ohio Alliance for Arts Education as an education consultant covers a variety of projects including the Ohio Teacher Evaluation System. She has served on the Steering Committee of the Arts Education Partnership, the Arts Education Council of Americans for the Arts, as a peer reviewer for the Teaching Artist Journal, and a grant reviewer for the U.S. Department of Education.
Ms. Levin was director of the Kennedy Center Alliance for Arts Education Network (KCAAEN) from 1993-2004 and is a former senior staff member of the American Association of School Administrators and the New Jersey State Council on the Arts. A frequently published author, Ms. Levin conceived and authored A Community Audit for Arts Education while at the Kennedy Center along with a set of arts education toolkits to support non-profit organization assessment and leadership development. She is the author of the monograph entitled Engaging Senior Leadership to Advance Arts in Schools, An examination of Los Angeles County’s Arts for All 2009-2010 Leadership Fellows Program (Los Angeles County Arts Commission 2011) and Leadership Matters: The Role of Superintendents in Championing the Arts in Public Schools (Americans for the Arts 2008). Ms. Levin has been a frequent speaker and panelist at conferences throughout the United States. She earned a B.S. in Art Education and Painting from the University of Delaware and a Master’s degree in Business Administration with an emphasis in arts administration from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She has served as faculty for the arts management programs of American University and Cabrini College and taught visual art in the Wilmington (Delaware) Public Schools. She is a member of the American University Arts Management Program Advisory Council and a board member of the Carolyn Dorfman Dance Company.