Three College of Fine Arts students are among the 2023-2024 University Fellows cohort, including Maya Jackson (MFA, art) and Savanah Pennell (PhD, art history and education) along with Lori Hennessy (DMA, musical arts). This Graduate Center program is a prestigious fellowship offered to Arizona’s highest-ranked incoming graduate students.
- Lori Hennessy, School of Music
- Maya Jackson, School of Art
- Savanah Pennell, School of Art
Recipients of the fellowship receive a competitive financial package, professional development programming, mentoring and community engagement. The goal of the program is to recruit and develop the next generation of leaders and collaborative innovation on campus and the surrounding communities.
Lori Hennessy is a PhD student in cello performance. She has a BM and an MM in cello performance and Suzuki pedagogy from the Cleveland Institute of Music.
For the past decade, Hennessy has been a cello instructor in the San Francisco Bay Area. She’s been developing the talent of her students as young as three, while continuing her education in pedagogy. She hopes to contribute to this field as a visionary who prioritizes body ergonomics while grounding her work with the history of performance practice.
She looks forward to learning from faculty and collaborating with her peers and performing as a cellist in the UArizona’s Graduate Center Spring Quartet. She has two rabbits who like to sleep next to her endpin while she plays.
Maya Jackson | artist website
Maya Jackson is a MFA student in Photography, Video, and imaging. Her work focuses on challenging photography as documentation, “truthful” imagery, and introspection through self portraiture as a form of meditation. Her primary focus is making image-based art. She also practices poetry, sculptural installation, and video.
Since 2017, Jackson has been a lead mentor and class instructor at Oakwood Arts, a nonprofit whose goal is to make art and careers in creative industries accessible to everyone. She is also an active participant in Richmond’s local arts community. She earned her BFA from VCUarts in 2019.
In addition to her work, she is also an adjunct studio instructor at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, and she was previously the studio manager and photographer at Dementi Studio, Richmond’s oldest photographic studio.
Savanah Pennell | artist website
Raised in the Borderlands of Arizona, Savanah Pennell is a Chicanx artist, curator, and scholar. She is a PhD student whose research focuses on Spanish Colonial art of the Southwest and contemporary Latinx art.
Pennell’s work is influenced by ancestral knowledge and Decolonial and Post colonial theory. She received her B.A in art history from Arizona State University and her M.A in art politics from the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University.
In addition to her work, she loves watching movies, gardening, and traveling.
Past CFA University Fellows
2023-2024
Lori Hennessy (music)
Maya Jackson (art)
Savanah Pennell (art)
2022-2023
Maria Fatima Corona del Toro (music)
Jenna Green (art)
Mary Monaghan (music)
Claire Taylor (art)
2021-2022
Anupam Singh (art)
Gloria Ines Orozco Dorado (music)
2020-2021
Emmy Tisdel (music)
Mariel Miranda (art)
2019-2020
Raven Moffett (art)
Lucy Mugambi (art)
2018-2019
Jared Baker (dance)
Rebecca Thompson (art/AIAR*)
2017-2018
Matthew Crosby (music)
Maria del Mar Navarro (art/AIAR*)
2016-2017
Khaled Jarrar (art)
Juan Mejia (music)
2015-2016
Misha Burstein (art)
Stephanie Hoeckley (music)
2014-2015
Terrence Pitt-Brooke (music)
Danielle Sheather (dance)
* Applied Intercultural Arts Research Graduate Interdisciplinary Program