Empowering Through Education: Getting to Know Dr. Keri Watson, Executive Director of the Florida Prison Education Project (FPEP) and Associate Professor of Art History at UCF
Dr. Keri Watson is a scholar, leader, and change-maker whose work bridges the worlds of art, education, and social justice. As Executive Director of the Florida Prison Education Project and Associate Professor of Art History at UCF, she is transforming lives and communities through the power of knowledge and creative expression.
Dr. Watson’s Remarkable Career Journey
Since joining the University of Central Florida in 2014, Dr. Keri Watson brings a wealth of experience from her previous teaching roles at Ithaca College, Auburn University, and the Savannah College of Art and Design. She earned her Ph.D. in Art History from Florida State University in 2010 and is also an established
author. She has written This is America: Re-Viewing the Art of the United States (2022) with Keidra Daniels Navaroli and was a co-editor of The Routledge Companion to Art and Disability (2022).
Additionally, she serves as the Finance and Grants Manager for Panorama: Journal of the Association of Historians of American Art and her work on American Art has been supported by the National Endowment for the Arts, the Fulbright-Terra Foundation, and the Society for the Preservation of American Modernists. Art enthusiasts can find her research published in journals like Source: Notes in the History of Art, Mosaic: A Journal for the Interdisciplinary Study of Literature, Southern Cultures, and Journal of Surrealism and the Americas to name a few.
As the current Associate Professor of Art History at the University of Central Florida and Executive Director of the Florida Prison Education Project (FPEP), which she founded in 2017, she leads the initiative to offer undergraduate education to those in the Central Florida prison system.
The Inspiration for the Florida Prison Education Project
Dr. Watson’s inspiration for the Florida Prison Education Project stemmed from her experience teaching at Auburn University Montgomery (AUM) where she had her first opportunity teaching at a prison. Once she arrived to UCF, she searched for similar opportunities.
Coincidentally, at that same time, Dr. Hitt—who was UCF’s President at the time—launched a strategic plan that called for more engagement with the community. Motivated by the gap she felt, she took the initiative and proposed the Florida Prison Education Project. “We presented our project and after a campus-wide vote, FPEP was designated of two Community Challenge initiatives,” she shares. Learn more about the UCF Community Challenge initiatives in the UCF news article: UCF Community Challenge Initiative Backs 2 Projects.
Balancing Her Role as Executive Director of FPEP and UCF’s Associate Professor of Art History
When finding ways to balance both roles, Dr. Watson finds common ground. “I received a two-year grant from the National Endowment for the Arts,” she says, which has allowed her to continue her work in art and share the correlations between art and incarceration, injustices, and inequities. “I am currently editing a collection, America’s Carceral Landscape: The Art, Material Culture, and Visual Aesthetics of Confinement.” Dr. Watson explains, “the fourteen collected essays consider art that exposes, challenges, and participates in the oppressive forces that mark the contours of America’s carceral landscape.”
The Vision for the Future of the Florida Prison Education Project
If there’s one word that captures the future of the Florida Prison Education
Project, it’s ‘growth.’ They are working hard to increase awareness across campus and donate books to prison libraries. When it comes to their workforce and students, they are bringing on more faculty to offer more classes, expanding to more prisons, and even offer scholarships to UCF students who want to major in criminal justice and prison education.
Dr. Watson also mentions another exciting new initiative. The Florida Education Project will be “helping colleagues at other colleges and universities across Florida start similar programs,” she says, impacting not just Central Florida, but the entire state of Florida as well.
How has UCF Supported Her Career Goals and What Advice Would You Give Someone Interested in Working at UCF?
“UCF is a wonderful place to work,” Dr. Watson shares, “I have been supported by my department and college as I have pursued this project and others. Provost Mike Johnson, CAH Dean Jeff Moore, and SVAD Director Rudy McDaniel have offered much needed encouragement and mentorship for which I am grateful and staff members across the university have offered incredible support for FPEP.”
For those who are interested in working at UCF, Dr. Watson has two simple yet impactful words for you, “Get Involved!”
How to Get Involved with FPEP
Visit the Florida Prison Education Project’s website to learn how to be involved. Donors, teachers, and volunteers are always welcomed.
