The “Evolving” Crisis: New Research on the Precarious State of the Arts in Higher Education
Nov 5, 2026 3:00-4:15pm Eastern/noon-1:15pm Pacific
This webinar will be a panel discussion with the researchers behind “The ‘Evolving’ Crisis: The Precarious State of the Arts in Higher Education”, published in the May 2026 issue of the American Journal of Arts Management (AJAM). The panel will discuss the findings of the multi-institutional research coordinated by the organization Arts Administrators in Higher Education (AAHE), which included responses collected in 2025 from more than 50 colleges and universities across the United States.
This paper argues that the contemporary state of the arts in U.S. higher education is characterized by two structural dynamics that help explain the persistent vulnerability of non-revenue-generating programs: the Advocacy-Resource Trap, a self-reinforcing cycle in which understaffed units cannot generate the impact evidence needed to secure resources; and the Decentralization Paradox, wherein programming distributed across multiple units produces fragmentation rather than integration.
Topics to be discussed include:
- A brief overview of the study’s research impetus, rubric, effort, and methodology
- A description and discussion of the Advocacy/Resource Trap
- A description and discussion of the Decentralization Paradox
- A discussion of the five representative university case studies
The webinar will also include a live 15 minute Q&A, for which the participants may also submit questions prior to the webinar HERE.
Registration
Registration to all a2ru webinars is free for all students, faculty and staff at a2ru member institutions and departments, as well an a2ru individual members. Please use your institutional email when registering.
Registration for non-members is $20; registration for non-member students is $10.
Panelists
Rebecca Taylor, FRSA is an educator, researcher, and strategist whose work centers on the intersection of the arts, education, and philosophy. She is a part-time lecturer and doctoral candidate in the Department of Arts & Humanities at Teachers College, Columbia University, researching how aesthetic education can help students navigate complexity, cultivate attention, and pursue lives of meaning in times of uncertainty. Rebecca is a Fellow of the Royal Society for the Arts (RSA) and has been awarded the 2026 Graduate Fellow in the ‘Life Worth Living’ Program at Yale University. In addition to her academic work, Rebecca has more than two decades of experience in the arts & culture sector, including leadership roles at MoMA PS1 and The Museum of Modern Art, New York (MoMA); The J. Paul Getty Trust; and The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (MOCA).
Claudia V. Dorn has many years’ experience working in and around arts, education, and academia. Claudia managed the opening of the Roble Arts Gym at Stanford University after starting her career at Stanford with the Bing Concert Hall managing artists, contracts, and operations. Claudia has focused her effort at Stanford Arts in developing interdisciplinary artistic opportunities for Stanford students in a variety of media, including performance, music, and visual arts. Claudia is especially interested in artistic experimentation and exploration and different methods of creative expression.
Nicoleen Willson, DMA, is an arts administrator, educator, and higher-education leader at Johns Hopkins University (JHU), where she has built a career centered on the arts, collaboration, and student engagement. In 2026, she was selected as Deputy for Student Engagement, supporting the Associate Vice Provost for Student Engagement and Dean of Students portfolio. In this role, she serves as a key member of the leadership team, helping plan, implement, and oversee strategic initiatives and special projects. Willson previously served as Director of the Office of Arts and Innovation at JHU, advancing creative initiatives and fostering arts engagement throughout the Johns Hopkins community, and previously served as General Manager of the Hopkins Symphony Orchestra. Her leadership extends beyond her university roles: she served on the Johns Hopkins University Task Force for the Arts and various leadership roles in Arts Administrators in Higher Education (AAHE). Willson holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in Clarinet Performance, a doctorate in Performance and Arts Management, and a certificate in Nonprofit Management, and she is also a certified mediator. Through her work in both the arts and student affairs, Willson brings extensive experience in leadership, collaboration, innovation, and student-centered engagement to her role at Johns Hopkins.
Deb Mexicotte recently retired from the University of Michigan after nearly 30 years in a number of student, faculty, and arts-focused programs and units. She was most recently the Director of ArtsEngine, an interdisciplinary arts integrative program which brought together the visual arts, design, imusic, information, engineering, and technology through collaborative research, teaching, funding, special projects, and community. She also served as Director of Arts at Michigan (now part of the U-M Arts Initiative), and as the Primary Investigator for the U-M Arts Engagement Project, (AEP) – a large longitudinal undergraduate study focusing on the values, skills, attitudes, barriers, and social well-being associated with co-curricular arts participation at U-M (The AEP dataset is in the public domain through the National Archive of Data and Arts and Culture (NADAC)). In her expanding free time she is enjoying her new status as a grandparent, ignoring her garden, and knitting for the resistance.