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In August, Emily Carr welcomed Steven Lam as our new Dean of Graduate Studies and Associate Vice-President of Research. Steven comes to �鶹��Ƶ from Purchase College, State University of New York, where he taught in the graduate and sculpture programs and served as Director of the School of Art + Design.

In this new role, Steven will oversee both �鶹��Ƶ’s graduate programs and the research initiatives of the university, and develop the next iteration of the university’s strategic research plan. His goal is to promote and catalyze research activities at �鶹��Ƶ, and support long-term art and design projects with social consequence.

Steven received an MFA in Art from the University of California, Irvine. UC Irvine is a public university with progressive values; at the time it was one of the few graduate programs that supported rigorous studio training with a deep investment in critical theory. His graduate studies began shortly after 9/11, when universities were grappling with discussions of ethics, representation, and politics. “I started grad school in a unique socio-political moment. Additionally, the program has a long legacy of conceptual art and post-studio practices. It was a school that emphasized not just skills and techniques, but how artists can also create interventions in systems.”

This systems-based approach shaped his own belief that it’s important to provide a broad arts education that trains students to be critical and adventurous generalists. “I don’t believe in specialization,” Steven says. “While it can be wonderful to be absorbed in a single field, industry has created a market fiction in which the role of education is merely seen as job preparation, not lifelong experimentation, learning, and understanding. And furthermore artists and designers are not fixed, predetermined entities.”

“If there are ways to encourage more int