Art and student success

Enhancing student success is a key priority across Penn State, with a focus on creating opportunities and experiences that help students thrive academically, personally and professionally. At Penn State Lehigh Valley, the arts contribute to that broader effort by encouraging students to engage with new ideas, consider different perspectives and develop creativity, curiosity and critical-thinking skills that extend across disciplines.

Lori Hepner, a professor of integrative arts at Penn State Greater Allegheny, has previously demonstrated that connection by bringing robot light painting into a Penn State Lehigh Valley mathematics class, allowing students to visualize spatial and computational concepts through art.

“Art gives people a way into their own thinking that does not look like the thing they are afraid of failing at,” Hepner said, “and it insists there is no single correct answer, only a decision you make, look at, and revise.”

Hepner’s work in LIGHT builds upon her “Drawing with Light” practice, in which photographs of the sky are replayed through wearable, programmable LED arrays and redrawn through the artist’s movement during a long photographic exposure. Her work is held by the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum and the Carnegie Museum of Art, among other collections.

Susan Morelock, an Allentown-based artist whose work engages photography, video and writing, also sees art as a way to develop skills that reach beyond the gallery.

“Art forces you to slow down, pay attention, and sit with the possibility that you might not know an exact answer,” Morelock said. “Art directly invites uncertainty, self-expression, and connection.”

The other participating artists bring a variety of backgrounds and approaches to the exhibition. Gil teaches studio art at Lafayette College; Odegaard is professor and chair of the art department at Cedar Crest College; and Corinne Lalik is an Allentown-based artist, designer and co-founder of Holly Jean Studios.