Dr. Patty Yancey is a mixed media artist presently living and working on the Northern California coast. Her work has spanned the fields of graphics and fine arts, dance and visual artist-in-schools and museums, non-profit arts administration, and higher education. Yancey holds a Ph.D. in Social and Cultural Studies in Education and an M.A. in Educational Psychology from the University of California, Berkeley.  She earned a B.A. in Fine and Applied Arts from American University in Washington, D.C.

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Her first career was in graphic arts and illustration in Santa Barbara and San Francisco. She moved to Alaska on a whim in 1978, returning to Northern California in the late 1980s where her career focus concentrated on non-profit arts administration and artist-in-schools work (visual arts and dance) in the K-12 system. In 1993, she was accepted to the M.A./Ph.D. program in the Graduate School of Education at UC Berkeley.  While in graduate school, she honed her qualitative research skills working as an independent research consultant for the National Study of Charter Schools funded by the U.S.D.O.E. and for UC Berkeley’s Policy Analysis for California Education (PACE).

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In 2000, she was hired as an Assistant Professor and Director of the Arts and Education Collaborative (AEC) in the School of Education at the University of San Francisco. As Director of the AEC at USF, she developed and piloted an arts-integrated K-8 multiple subject teacher credential/M.A.T. program, in partnership with the East Bay Conservation Corps Charter School. The overarching goal of the program was to integrate music and the visual, performing, and literary arts throughout the two years of credential courses and field work in order for multiple subject teacher candidates to become skilled in teaching and integrating the arts across the K-8 curriculum.

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In 2003, she accepted an Associate Professor position in the School of Education at Humboldt State University in Arcata, California. In addition to teaching in the credential and M.A. programs in the HSU School of Education, she co-chaired the University of California, Berkeley Arts Education Initiative (AEI) funded by the Ford Foundation. AEI was a regional project focused on infusing and strengthening the arts in pre-service teacher education at five higher education institutions in Northern California. She also served as Director of HSU’s Office of Diversity and Inclusion (ODI) for three years. She was promoted to Full Professor in 2008. Since retiring in 2014 with Professor Emerita status, Yancey’s time is focused on working in her studio and enjoying walks in the redwoods on the glorious Pacific North Coast.