Aileen Wilson

Professor Aileen Wilson is an art and design educator, K-12 teacher educator, and researcher. Her research is focused on the contextual challenges that influence high school students art college-going decisions. Her teaching explores K-12 art education as part of an expanded artistic practice through examining the ways in which contemporary art practices, processes, and materials can be adapted for use in K-12 settings, and how classrooms can function as studios generating new ideas and approaches.

Aileen’s work has been supported by 2011–2012, 2019-2020 and 2022-2023 Fulbright Specialist Grants and a 2013–2014 National Art Education Foundation Research Award.

As an educator, Aileen has taught widely nationally and internationally including masters studios in art education in the Department of Arts Education at Iceland Academy of the Arts, Reykjavik, Iceland and workshops in Design Thinking for Creative Problem Solving taught by Professor Anne-Laure Fayard in the Department of Technology Management, NYU Tandon School of Engineering, Brooklyn, NY. She was a Visiting Academic in the Department of Community Development at Glasgow School of Education, Scotland, in spring, 2019 and a Visiting Professor in the Department of Architecture and Civil Engineering at the 20th Prishtina International Summer University (PISU), University of Hasan Prishtina, Kosovo, 2020.

Aileen was the founding director of Pratt Institute’s Center for Art, Design, and Community Engagement K-12 and served as Director from 2015 to 2020. In 2013, in order to provide underserved New York City teens attending public schools with greater access to high-quality studio-based instruction in art and design she launched the Pratt Young Scholars, a college access program, now housed in the Center K-12. In support of the Center K-12’s work with children and teens, Professor Wilson and the Center K-12 team received institution-supported funding of almost $1 million from foundation, corporate and government funders including NEA, NYSCA, Pinkerton Foundation, Hearst Foundation, and Altman Foundation.

B.A. Fine Art / Printmaking/Painting (1st Class), Gray’s School of Art, Aberdeen, Scotland; M.A. Printmaking, Chelsea School of Art, London; Ed.D. Art/Art Education (with Distinction), Teachers College, Columbia University.