FATE 2025 Conference Awards
2025 Conference Awardees
Distinguished Educator Award
Carol Elkovich (she/her)
Associate Professor + Director of Multilingual Studio Teaching and Learning
California College of the Arts
www.carolelkovich.com
IG: @celkovich / @art_action_oracle
Carol Elkovich is an internationally recognized artist, educator, and scholar dedicated to innovative arts pedagogy. A Fulbright Distinguished Scholar (2024), she conducted research at the Glasgow School of Art, leading to her forthcoming edited collection, Reading Landscape: A Field Guide for Artists, Architects, & Designers (Intellect Press, 2025). With over twenty-five years of teaching experience, she is an Associate Professor at California College of the Arts, where she also serves as Director of Multilingual Studio Teaching and Learning, developing equitable pedagogies for global classrooms. She has presented innovative arts education techniques and pedagogy at FATE and CAA; Her work is published in academic journals and books; and she has taught internationally as a visiting artist at the Glasgow School of Art and Siena Art Institute.
Emerging Educator Award
Elizabeth Shores (they/them)
3/4 Faculty of Art and Art Appreciation Area Coordinator
Rowan University
Adjunct Professor of Art & Art History
College of New Jersey
elizabethshores.com
Elizabeth A. Shores (they/them) is an artist, educator, and researcher based in Lenapehoking (Philadelphia). They hold an MFA from the University of New Mexico and a BFA from the University of Iowa, with additional studies in China, Mexico, and India. They currently teach foundations studio art and art history at Rowan University and the College of New Jersey (Digital Media, Visual Thinking, Color + Design, Drawing, and Art & Ecology). At Rowan, they also serve as Area Coordinator for Art Appreciation. Elizabeth’s postsecondary students have showcased work at national and international conferences, research symposiums, and campus exhibitions.
For the past four years, Elizabeth has co-organized Rowan University’s annual Symposium for Interdisciplinary Arts, engaging over 594 students in 49 faculty-led workshops. They are also co-authoring a grant-funded DEIA research study that hired diverse graduate and undergraduate consultants who reviewed Arts & Design syllabi which led to the development of an Inclusive Art & Design Framework & syllabus template. Elizabeth additionally teaches digital art to secondary students at Fleisher Art Memorial and has taught conceptual art to high school students in Bosnia & Herzegovina. They taught environmental art to older adults as a two-time Center for Emerging Visual Artists fellow and led bioart workshops at institutions like Temple University and Art Laboratory Berlin.
Elizabeth collaborates with artists, scientists, and lawyers through multi-sited transnational methods of collaborative design that study the language of empire in material culture. Artworks include nanoscale sculptures, legal declarations of the Sun’s personhood, and compostable biomaterials that waste well together. As part of the Biomaterials Working Group, Elizabeth advocates for sustainable studio practices. Elizabeth has completed residencies at the Millay Colony, Blue Mountain Center, Shandaken: Storm King, MASS MoCA, and others. Their work is held in collections at the University of Iowa, the University of North Carolina, and the Nevada Museum of Art.
Belonging & Community Award
Allison Yasukawa (she/her)
Associate Professor, Foundation
Emily Carr University of Art + Design
allisonyasukawa.com / languagingart.design
IG: @yasukawaaaaah / FB: allison.yasukawa
Allison Yasukawa is an interdisciplinary maker, liberatory educator, and deep language nerd. She holds an MFA in Studio Arts and an MA in TESOL/Applied Linguistics from the University of Illinois at Chicago. As both an artist and educator, Allison is invested in what communication scholar Joanne Gilbert calls "heckling the status quo.” In her studio practice, she investigates asymmetries of power in language and interaction and examines crossings of various kinds, from the personal to the global. She has exhibited in the United States and internationally at spaces including the American University Museum (Washington D.C.), High Desert Test Sites (Joshua Tree, CA), and Dak'Art OFF (Saint-Louis, Sénégal). Allison has developed arts-based English language programs and taught at art/design schools including the California Institute of the Arts, the California College of the Arts, the Maryland Institute College of Art, and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She has presented workshops internationally on artmaking and languagemaking in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia; Grand-Bassam, Ivory Coast; and Changsha, China and is working on a book about language and/as creative practice. Allison is an Associate Professor in Foundation at Emily Carr University of Art + Design and lives in Vancouver, Canada on the unceded territories of the Coast Salish peoples including the xÊ·mÉ™θkÊ·É™yÌ“É™m (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh Úxwumixw (Squamish) and sÉ™lÌ“ilwÌ“É™taʔɬ (Tsleil-Waututh).