Joann Brennan is a dedicated educator, accomplished artist, and academic leader with over thirty-four years of experience in higher education. She applies a human-centered equity-minded approach to empowering and serving others, values inclusive collaboration as critical to advancing impactful creative solutions, and strives to enhance a community of belonging, purpose, and joy.
Brennan has been a member of the University of Colorado Denver community for twenty-five years. Over the past eighteen years she has been called upon to serve in a variety of leadership roles in the College of Arts & Media (CAM) and in within the University of Colorado Denver (CU Denver). With a commitment and enthusiasm to support the success of others, she was called upon to assume leadership roles at the college-level, advancing from a Discipline Director and Department Chair to Associate Dean. As she grew in her abilities to lead operational and strategic initiatives, collaborate across a wide range of stakeholders to achieve results, and advance diversity, equity and inclusion efforts, she was asked to lead in system and campus-level roles, serving as the Associate Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs and Interim Vice Chancellor for Faculty Affairs. She is currently an Interim Co-Dean of the CAM.
She has taught photography at the University of Rhode Island, School of Art and Design at the State University of New York, and Princeton University. Her artwork has been presented in exhibitions and publications nationally and internationally. In addition, she was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2003 and a Smithsonian Fellowship from the Smithsonian Museum of American Art in 2010.
Since joining the faculty of the College of Arts & Media (CAM) in 1998, she has focused her efforts on enhancing the success and well-being of students, faculty, and staff, in projects and initiatives at the course, program and college level.
As an artist, her artwork has been presented in exhibitions and publications nationally and internationally including; Land Matters, Culture and Identity by Liz Wells, Earth Now (exhibition and book) New Mexico Museum of Art, International Fototage Photography Festival, Mannheim/Ludwigshafen, Germany; Paradise Paved (exhibition and catalogue), Painted Bride Art Center, Philadelphia, PA; Princeton University Art Museum; Center for Photography, Woodstock, New York, Peggy Notebeart Nature Museum, Chicago, Il.; and European Photography Magazine and Photo Review Quarterly. Her artwork is in the collections of the Smithsonian Museum of American Art, Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art, New Mexico State University Museum, the Paine Webber Collection, Princeton Art Museum and Danforth Art Museum. She was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2003 and a Smithsonian Fellowship from the Smithsonian Museum of American Art in 2010.
In 2006 and 2010 Brennan was elected to the National Board of Directors for the Society for Photographic Education (SPE) to serve two four-year terms. Brennan has served SPE in numerous capacities including membership on the Executive Committee, Chair of the Regional Affairs Committee and participation on three national conference committees. In March 2008, Brennan chaired and provided the vision for the 2008 SPE National Conference titled “Agents of Change: Art and Advocacy.”
Email Address: Joannbrennanphotography@gmail.com