Morgan Bouldes selected as First-Year Experience full time faculty

Morgan Bouldes

The Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design (MIAD) welcomes Morgan Bouldes as the new full-time assistant professor of First-Year Experience. Bouldes joined MIAD’s teaching community in 2021 as an AICAD Post-Graduate Teaching Fellow and will continue to contribute to the MIAD community in the First-Year Experience department. Originally from Detroit, Bouldes holds a BFA in Photography from Wayne State University and graduated with an MFA in Photography from Cranbrook Academy of Art.

“One of the biggest components to my teaching philosophy is the environment in which education is happening. The environment is really important to me,” explains Bouldes. “It takes work to fully understand the type of student, the type of person that your student is … Creating a welcoming, warm, authentic environment—that starts with me. Students especially can tell when you’re not being authentic, so I keep it as real as possible.”

This joyfully student-centered approach has served Bouldes well. “No one wants to go to school if it’s not fun,” she says. “If we can create an environment where you feel comfortable enough to be yourself, you trust that your instructor has your best interests in mind—not just the interests that involve education, but your whole interest. If we can have fun at the same time, then the information will do what it’s supposed to do.”

An accomplished and multidisciplinary artist herself, Bouldes embraces the experimental and seeks out mediums other than photography to bolster her artistic practice. “I’ve always been a writer, so at the heart of my practice I am a storyteller,” she continues. “I like to enact vulnerability from my own lens as a way to promote universality and be able to connect to people on different levels.” This vulnerability led to her graduate thesis project, a reflection on the grief of losing her mother at age 20. “There’s all these different components of the human experience, particularly from my lens as a Black woman, but the experience of losing a mother or parent is universal, and all those feelings that come with it are universal,” she says. “I’m really interested in all the little invisible connectivities between humans and how there’s overlap there.”

As an instructor, Bouldes is especially excited to work with first-year students. “They’ve got this vision for themselves but they don’t exactly know how it’s going to get executed, they’re just going to wing it. And I’m here to wing it with them!” she laughs.

Learn more about Morgan and explore MIAD’s First-Year Experience program!