Pratt Institute

Education

B.A., Queens College, City University of New York;
M.S., University of Wisconsin Madison; Thesis: Intelligibility and Modern Art
PhD., New York University; A Study of Three Students in a Course Called Art and Self

Biography

Dr. Amy Brook Snider arrived at Pratt in 1979. She chaired the Art and Design Education Department for 30 years while also working as a consultant in arts education. As Chair, she received grants for a number of funded programs she developed for middle school, high school, and incarcerated students including Summer Design, DICE, (Design Initiative Through Community Empowerment), and classes integrating art and poetry respectively. In 2012, she re-emerged as full professor, supervising student teachers and advising thesis students during her first semester back at Pratt.

Her non-traditional approach to the profession is exemplified by the broad range of her interests, i.e., story telling and children’s picture books, self-taught artists, and the integration of design in art education, to name a few.

Snider is a fervent believer in effective and democratic organizational structures that allow meaningful communication between each of Pratt’s constituencies—the administration, faculty, students, and staff—particularly on matters related to teaching and learning. Thus, she has served as Director of Writing Across the Curriculum, and as a representative on the Faculty Council and later, the Academic Senate. She was a founding member of the Initiative for Arts, Community, and Social Change Committee, and has served on several other committees across schools and departments.

In addition to her teaching at Pratt, she has lectured in the United States, Canada, and Great Britain; designed international programs in Lucca, Italy, Port Elizabeth, South Africa, and Amsterdam, the Netherlands; published articles; conducted staff development workshops; curated exhibitions; organized national panels and conferences; and advised a public television station, an architectural firm, and private foundations. She has also served on the Board of the Beginning With Children Charter School and was awarded a Fulbright Specialist Grant.

Since stepping down as chair, Snider has worked as an educational consultant for Studio-In-A-School, Achievement First Charter Schools, and the Scandinavia House. Her consultations have increasingly been the result of recommendations by her former students, i.e., Caroline Hall, Katie Heimbold, and Mark DeRosa in a gratifying reversal of roles. She continues to collaborate with PS 20, Brooklyn on a project that she initiated in January, 2010—the Artist/Designer Teacher-in-Residence Program, staffed by Pratt’s Art and Design Education alumni. In fall, 2012, Snider began organizing a series of art workshops for children based on the current exhibitions at the Scandinavia House and taught by Pratt’s Art and Design Education graduate students and alumni.