20 April 2013

To Whom It May Concern:

It is with great pleasure that I write in recommendation of Kitty Dixon as a prospective teacher.  She was a student in my art history courses and in a special art theory seminar which resulted in an excellent paper about public art.  In my forty years of teaching the discipline, I have had literally hundreds of students, the majority of them art majors.  A few stand out, and Kitty is at the top of that list.  While at all times she was prepared for class discussions, assignments, or exams, it was the quality of each piece that so elevated her above the rest of the students in the classes.  Each assignment or exam was an indication of thoughtful, integrated research, well-illustrated with appropriate examples of works of art and artists who made her points.  Her writing was, from the outset, of such quality that I was prompted to suggest that, should she decide to pursue an advanced degree, art history would surely welcome her.  In fact, I always saved Kitty’s work to the end, knowing it would give me something to think about in terms of new ideas about the work in question.  I also saved it to the end so that I would not be tempted to grade others’ work against hers, which would have been unfair to the majority of the class.

If it seems that I have spoken with lavish superlatives, so be it.  Kitty has earned them.  She is an Honours student and a McClain Scholar, both achieved through a combination of inherent intelligence and very hard, constant work.  While I have often seen students who began as Honours students fail to live up to their advanced billing as the “cream of the crop,” there is no chance of that happening to Kitty at any stage of her academic or professional career.  Kitty arrived as a worker and remains a worker, no matter what obstacles she may face.  The combination of intellect and the desire to learn-- and to accumulate a body of knowledge-- is a very powerful one, not so often encountered in today’s students.  Kitty possesses both and she also synthesizes what she learns.  This is quite rare today, when education is so often broken into small, seemingly separate and disparate, pieces of information.  Kitty also has (or so it appears to me), a prodigious memory, for she consistently draws upon previous courses and other sources of information to assemble her papers and exams.

While I have not had an opportunity to observe Kitty in the classroom, her discussions of what she has done or wants to do seem sound and as if they would stimulate learning in such a setting, and certainly her art history presentations were executed in a polished manner.  I assume any classroom teaching would demonstrate the same careful preparation and implementation.  To hire Kitty Dixon as a teacher would certainly be to hire the best.  I recommend her without qualification and would be happy to answer any specific questions about her work, if needed.

Sincerely,

Marian J Hollinger, Assistant Professor of Art (retired)

mhollinger@fairmontstate.edu; 304.292.1184A