Joan Ashcraft, DMA, is Director of Fine and Performing Arts/OMA for the Tucson Unified School District (TUSD) in Tucson, Arizona. She has organized collaborative arts education partnerships between TUSD, statewide and national arts organizations co-creating Tucson Arts Connections, the multicultural touring ARTSmobiles and artifact collection, the Fine Arts Summer Institute for Teachers and Artists, the Fine Arts Youth Academy, Arts for Learning Technology Project, and Project Shine after school arts and literacy instruction for students. Her work is best recognized in the co-creation of Opening Minds through the Arts (OMA), a nationally recognized research-based arts integration program for students in grades K-8. OMA has been identified as one of Arizona’s best practices, receiving the Arizona Department of Education’s Spotlight on Success Award for its significant, positive gains in student achievement and is currently a case site for Harvard Project Zero’s study entitled Qualities of Quality: Excellence in Arts Education and How to Achieve It. OMA has been sited in two publications by Arts Education Partnership: Third Space, Where Learning Matters and The Power of Partnerships in Higher Education.

 

Through Dr. Ashcraft’s leadership and the outstanding music teachers whom she supervises, TUSD has been recognized as one of the Best 100 Communities for Music Education and won the Governor’s Arts Award in Arts Education in 1999 and 2007. Dr. Ashcraft participated in Pima’s Cultural Plan Leadership Coalition where OMA was sited as a model program for arts education.

 

Dr. Ashcraft has served on the Partners in Education Advisory Board for the John F. Kennedy Center and made it possible for TUSD to become the only school affiliate of the Smithsonian Institution. She has received the Governors Arts in Education Award (twice), The University of Arizona’s Distinguished Alumni Award, the Arizona Music Educators Music Educator and Music Administrator of the Year Awards, the Rotary Four Way Test Award, and the University of Arizona’s Professional Education Award.