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Northern Illinois University

NIU Office of Public Affairs


News Release

Contact: Mark McGowan, NIU Office of Public Affairs
(815) 753-9472

December 9, 2003

National Art Education Association honors
NIU’s Madeja as year’s top educator

DeKalb — Stan Madeja, a professor in the Northern Illinois University School of Art, found his life’s calling as an undergrad at the University of Minnesota.

Madeja started toward an engineering career – a metal smith, he long had loved simply making things – but stumbled into art during his liberal arts classes. An art professor named Reid Hastie then encouraged the young artist to pursue teaching as well. Hastie became Madeja’s mentor as he eventually went on to earn three degrees and, in 1956, began teaching art in secondary schools.

Forty-seven years later, as Madeja looks forward to a spring retirement, he is being named the National Higher Education Art Educator of the Year by the National Art Education Association.

He will receive the award April 17 at the 2004 NAEA Convention in Denver.

“This is a nice way to leave. I’ve been in art education most of my career, and I’m pleased to be acknowledged by colleagues,” Madeja said. “They’ll invite me back next year to give a paper, which is a good way to summarize my career. I’ve always been a producing artist, and I think teaching art and producing art are compatible with one another.”

Madeja originally came to NIU in 1967 as an art professor, but left after one year for Washington, D.C., where he worked for the Arts and Humanities Program of the U.S. Office of Education. While there, he helped mold a campaign for schools to integrate the arts into the core curriculum.

He returned to DeKalb in 1983 to become dean of the College of Visual and Performing Arts, a position he held until 1994, when he stepped down to return to his first love.

“Deans only last so long. It was time for a change,” he said. “I always wanted to finish out my career as a teacher.”

The administrative ranks were not ready to lose Madeja, though, and in 1997 he became head of the art education division.

Since then, the program has become one of the country’s largest producers of art teachers, certifying up to 60 each year and placing 99 percent of graduates in jobs. It competes for students on a level with the nation’s top schools, including the prestigious art education programs in the Big 10. Enrollment in NIU’s undergraduate program has risen to 185, and the number of students pursing master’s degrees with a specialization in art education has quintupled from 12 to 60.

Madeja also points to the hiring of key professors, including Doug Boughton and Kerry Freedman, a husband-and-wife team recognized internationally for their work in art education, and Elizabeth Vallance, the former director of education at the St. Louis Art Museum. Longtime Professor Deborah Smith-Shank, meanwhile, is the 2003 Illinois Higher Education Art Educator of the Year.

“The program we’ve built is able to compete with any program. I’m very proud of it. There are very strong programs in the Midwest, and we hold our own with all of them,” Madeja said. “Our students have to know the subject area. We give them a strong base in their own discipline, which includes the history of art, studio processes and techniques and the art’s relationship to the popular and visual culture. We’re also on the forefront of how we can use the new imaging technology.”

Children grow up immersed in visual culture, Madeja said, which makes teaching and understanding visual culture a key component of NIU’s art education program.

Visual culture includes everything from television, movies, video games and advertising to toys, comic books, clothes, furniture and the Internet.

“Everyone knocks TV, but there is probably better arts programming now than ever before. Of course, you have to be discriminating in terms of what you view,” he said, pointing to cable networks such as A&E, the Discovery Channel and the History Channel. “And the new technology is making the arts available in everyone’s living room. The Internet is an absolute panacea for access to images and sounds. It’s a different world for students.”

While Madeja said he hasn’t seen the nature of art education change over five decades, he is impressed by its improving position in the curriculum.

“People know the arts exist and want them to exist as part of the general education program. In the 40 years I’ve been in this business, we’ve created a larger base of support,” he said. “The arts are an important, substantive area that shouldn’t be neglected or put aside. Arts-oriented schools are showing test scores in reading and math that compete with any other school.”

In retirement, Madeja hopes to spend as much time as possible indulging three lifetime passions: skiing down the slopes, traveling to art galleries and museums and enjoying the company of other artists and performers.

“Artists are people I like to associate with, and it’s a marvelous way to see the world,” he said. “I’ve really had a very good time. It’s like not having to go to work.”

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