Outstanding Faculty
Outstanding Teacher 2010-2011
Masami Toku
Professor, Department of Art and Art History
Masami Toku was originally born in Naze city (population about 50,000), located on a small island in the southern part of Japan far away from the mainland. Amami Ohshima is a beautiful semi-tropical island ringed with coral, between the East China Sea and the Pacific Ocean.
Masami Toku’s journey from Japan to the US is unique and a little complicated. Her learning and working environments were diverse until reaching her final area of art education. Her first academic major was in Japan in the areas of Japanese Literature and Library Information Science at Tsurumi Women’s College in Yokohama, Japan. Regardless of her academic major, she was working at Mitsubishi Chemistry Laboratory for ten years as an inorganic chemistry analyst, especially in the field of Agriculture. In 1989, Toku made up her mind to go back to a University to fulfill her long-term dream to be a curator and art educator in an art museum. Instead of staying in Japan to pursue her dream, she crossed the Pacific Ocean to go back to school in the US and got BFA at the school of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1992. While living in Chicago, she had a teaching experience in a Chicago Japanese School as a 7th G. classroom teacher and finally found her eternal destiny to be an art educator. Her final academic degrees were MA and Ed.D, in art education from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1998.
Toku joined the Department of Art and Art History, CSU, Chico in 1999 and she is currently a professor of art education since 2009. Toku currently serves two roles as an advisor of single subject in art and a coordinator in the area of art education at CSU, Chico. She is mainly teaching three courses in the area of art education and one course of GE (C-1) Art Appreciation-Multicultural Perspectives.
Toku’s research interest is the cross-cultural study of children’s artistic and aesthetic development in their pictorial worlds and how visual popular culture influences children’s visual literacy. She is working internationally as an educator, publisher, researcher, and speaker. For example, she is the general director of the international touring exhibition project of Girls’ Power! Shojo Manga! sponsored by the Japan Foundation (2005–2009) and traveling to 9 sites in North America and 5 sites in Japan. This is a still ongoing project that continues to attract many audiences all over the world. She also participated in the visual cultural project Art and Lecture in South America as a keynote speaker, sponsored by the Japan Foundation and the Embassy of Japan in 7 countries, Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Chile, Columbia, Peru, and Venezuela (2006 & 2007). Due to her international contribution to Art Educational Society, Toku received the 2008 United States Society for Education through Art (USSEA) International Ziegfeld Award at the National Art Education Association (NAEA) convention, New Orleans.
Toku is a non-stop multi-task educator. She is working locally, nationally, and internationally by collaborating with many people in diverse areas. One of her current local events in Chico is an annual cultural event of Far East Fusion, in collaboration with Art, Food Science, and Japanese departments since 2008. As an art exhibition director of USSEA, she also started a collaborative international touring exhibition of children’s artworks in the manga style of 4-panel art, Voices: What’s Going on in Youth World? Starting with public schools in Chico in 2008, the exhibition will travel to the next venue, Budapest, Hungary in conjunction with the world convention of International Society for Education through Art (InSEA).
Dr. Toku would like to say, “Thank you so much to my colleagues, friends, mentors, and students who supported me for the great honor of Outstanding Teacher Award in 2010-2011. Without your help, I would not have been able to work on the many projects that I have done in Chico over the last decade. I truly appreciate it (^_^)!”
Please visit Dr. Toku’s research website for some examples of publications and more details on her projects: Visual Cultural Research in Art & Education.
Please join CELT in congratulating Dr. Masami Toku for her selection as the 2010-11 Outstanding Teacher.
Outstanding Academic Advisor 2010-2011
Jane Rysberg
Professor, Department of Psychology
Jane Rysberg was born a long time ago at Fort Lewis, Washington, and is the only child of a career Army officer and an elementary school teacher. Her diaper pins were olive drab. About 5 percent of the population of the United States grows up with one or both parents serving in the military. Researchers are divided as to whether being an “army brat” has positive or negative outcomes. Professor Rysberg thinks that living and learning in several foreign countries and states was excellent preparation for becoming a faculty adviser. Moving multiple times prior to the age of fourteen taught her that everyone has an interesting story to tell.
Professor Rysberg was an anthropology major at the University of California, Davis and originally hoped to be an archaeologist. A semester in the field taught her that though ancient people do “speak”, they are not quick conversational partners. Looking for some more lively interactions, she went to Arizona State University. There, she obtained her doctorate with a specialty in “womb to tomb” psychology; (this means that she is interested in how development occurs across the life span). This orientation also facilitated her interest in college students and how they selected and rejected the options available on a campus. Jane came to CSU, Chico in 1981. The peripatetic ways of an army brat were left behind. She had found a home!
Professor Rysberg is enthused about the CSU, Chico approach to advising as a continuous process. She enjoys communicating with interested students before they apply to the university. Summer Orientation is a splendid opportunity to assist new students to maximize their experience of the campus and the community. Advising at Chico uses a team approach ensuring that continuing students always have someone to turn to, for a quick question or a lengthy discussion about their present choices and their future paths. Jane also enjoys maintaining contact with past students. Her last three publications were book chapters. Two of these chapters were in books edited by a researcher who, while an undergraduate at CSU, Chico, had been her advisee.
If you are interested in becoming an academic adviser, Jane recommends it highly. Just remember one basic rule: listen more than you speak.
Please join CELT in congratulating Dr. Jane Rysberg as this year’s Outstanding Academic Advisor.