September 12, 2013

Yasmine Awais, the new Assistant Director of Art Therapy within the College’s Department of Creative Arts Therapies, was awarded the first-ever Rawley Silver Research Award from the American Art Therapy Association (AATA). Awais earned the first award for her project, “Assessing Diversity in Art Therapy Programs,” which is comprised of on an anonymous online survey evaluating current efforts to attract students of color to graduate programs in art therapy.

Data from Awais’ online survey is being collected through the end of this month, and she hopes that directors of graduate programs in art therapy will continue to contribute to the research project through their responses to the survey.

Awais additionally co-authored an article that will be published in Art Therapy: Journal of the American Art Therapy Association (in press), titled “A call for diversity: The need to recruit and retain ethnic minority art therapy students.” Finally, Awais has written two chapters for an upcoming book on the subject of art therapy with diverse populations. Her recent experience in research has included a two-year project on the perception of art therapy in Saudi Arabia, which she conducted at King Fahad Medical City Rehabilitation Hospital in Riyadh. Awais is also working on research in HIV intervention through a pilot award from the National Institutes of Health.