Amy Green Deines, a candidate for College of Fine Arts dean, said she’s been visiting Wichita for nearly 30 years and loves the city, one of the reasons why she wants to serve as dean.

“Wichita … it’s kind of my safe, happy place,” Deines said at a public forum made up of students, faculty and staff on Monday.

Following College of Fine Arts Dean Rodney Miller’s retirement announcement, the dean search committee announced Deines as one of four candidates for fine arts dean.

Deines currently serves as the College of Art and Design dean at Lesley University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Before Lesley, she served in three different dean roles at Cranbrook Academy of Art and Lawrence Technological University.

With four deanships under her belt, Deines emphasized the importance of student-centeredness in her line of work. 

“What I’ve said to my team and my staff is that the whole purpose of us being here as educators, as professional staff, is to support students,” she said. “Without students, there’s no reason to come to work.”

As a trained architect, Deines touched on fine arts’ reputation in the “real world,” saying data that she’s collected supports that the fine arts are critical.

“It is a very legitimate and valuable degree,” she said. “You will not be moving home into your parent’s basement.”

Deines told students, faculty and staff about the various “narratives” she hopes to create at Wichita State. At Lesley, her office focused less on the discipline of the student but on the entire person and what their narrative was.

“It’s important for us, as a creative community, to think not just about disciplinary knowledge or technical knowledge, but what is the actual narrative that all of these programs can offer in terms of the way we tell our story,” she said.

Throughout her presentation, Deines frequently came back to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion plans. As DEI becomes more divisive in higher education, Deines said these policies are “very, very important” to her.

“I’ve been doing it for years,” she said. “I have a lot of wins in that area around changing policy on anti-racist pedagogy development.”

A forum attendee said that having old arts facilities has impacted morale, and as well as recruiting. With Wichita State’s Innovation Campus constantly growing, the attendee asked how the arts can be part of the innovation conversation.

“As dean, I’d find the folks that I need to talk to, and I would advocate very aggressively to make sure that we’re giving same resources around deferred maintenance and renovations,” Deines said. “I certainly think that we need to have a seat at the table.”

Deines is also not afraid of workers unionizing — she encourages it. At Lesley, faculty unionized nearly five years ago, and Deines has encouraged a staff organization on the campus to unionize as well.

“The university doesn’t want that,” she said. “I just think you have to treat everybody in your community with the equal amount of opportunities and protection.” 

Another attendee asked how Deines would approach compensating staff who continue to take on additional responsibilities without a pay increase.

“I am such a fierce advocate for staff,” Deines said. “I feel like they’re the magic in the machine behind all of the other things that we do, and of course, faculty are phenomenal as well, but we have to be more equitable about how we treat staff.”

With nearly 10 satellite locations around the city, Deines touched on wanting to make every Wichita State location cohesive in some way, though she said she doesn’t have a “direct solution” at the time. 

The candidate will be on campus Tuesday until the afternoon. Her campus visit schedule can be found here.

Students, faculty and staff can fill out a survey about Deines. The survey closes on April 27 at midnight.