Maryland First Lady Yumi Hogan Visits Art Therapy Thesis Presentation

(BALTIMORE, Md.) – Maryland’s first lady Yumi Hogan visited Notre Dame of Maryland University this week to salute nine master’s in art therapy degree candidates presenting their thesis projects in the state’s only graduate program preparing students to become professional art therapists. 
 
At the Thesis Colloquium Graduate Art Therapy Program, Hogan offered words of encouragement and praise for the third cohort to complete the program, recalling her first visit to the campus when the Master of Arts in art therapy program launched in 2018. Since then, 20 students, including the class of 2022, have completed NDMU’s program, which requires 1,000 hours of clinical instruction and a thesis project integrating research and field experiences. 
 
“This program centers art and artmaking as key to healing and the therapeutic relationship,” said Hogan. "Everything you have done with your research is wonderful."

The students' thesis projects spanned a wide range of art therapy practices and engaged diverse populations. Their names and topics are:

• Anne Brauer: Mental Health, Inmates, & Internship Art: A Student Art Therapist’s Journey
• Danielle Chan: Using Art Therapy and Puppetry to Support Behavioral Adaptivity with an Adolescent with Autism
• Whitney Dahlberg: Amulets of Love: Personal Objects in an Art Therapy Intervention for the Bereavement of Disenfranchised Grief
• Em Jones: An Existential Art Therapy Perspective in the Treatment of Traumatic Stress
• Esther Jones: Medicine Painting: Adapting Native Art Modalities for Art Therapy with Native Americans to Combat Negative Symptoms of Acculturation
• Shadora Robinson: The Impact of Virtual Museums on the Artist Identity for Art Therapists
• Lily Streaker: Integrative Art Therapy Techniques with a Female Athlete
• Daina Sullivan: Art Therapy Re-Envisioning Treatment in Residential Education Based Settings: A Position Paper
• Renee Vanderstelt: Factors of Change in Eco-Art Therapy with Older Adults

Hogan is an accomplished artist and champion of the art therapy profession. Her nonprofit organization Yumi CARES provides art therapy services to children and their families at the University of Maryland Children’s Hospital, where NDMU also places art therapy students for clinical internships. 

Established in 1895, Notre Dame of Maryland University (NDMU) is a private, Catholic institution in Baltimore, Maryland, with the mission to educate leaders to transform the world. Notre Dame has been named one of the best "Regional Universities North" by U.S. News & World Report.