Christine Ballengee Morris

Christine Ballengee-Morris was the founding director of The Multicultural Center at OSU.  This unit changed how diversity was defined, represented, and supported for and by students, faculty and community at The Ohio State University. Dr. Ballengee Morris is a Professor in the Arts Administration, Education and Policy Department and the American Indian Studies Coordinator for The Ohio State University. She has served as editor for Art Education and several editorial boards. She teaches art education classes that specialize in diversity explorations.  She is past president of the United States Society for Teaching through Art. Dr. Ballengee-Morris's teaching experiences include: fourteen years in the public school system, twenty years as an artist-in-residence in public schools and five countries, higher education since 1992, and international teaching. In 2007, she co-authored a book Interdisciplinary approaches to teaching art in high school (NAEA Publications). 

She is trained to lead Social Justice workshops and mediation and has served in those positions for several companies, universities, departments, and community organizations. She is a Cherokee-Appalachian and performs flatfoot dance with her musician husband, David Morris, and son, Jack.  She has received, 2008 National Art Education Higher Education Western Division Award; the 2007 Ziegfeld Award for Diversity; the 2006 National Art Education Grigsby Award (research in and commitment to diversity); 2000 OSU-Newark research and service award; and NAACP Licking County, Ohio’s Young Native American Woman leadership award.

Ballengee Morris’ research interest include self-determination, identity development, Indigenous arts, integrated curricula, service-learning, visual culture, and arts-based research. Her work was influenced by Paulo Freire and was given an opportunity to meet and interview him in 1996. Her research and service to the field demonstrate her commitment to education as an agent of community change.