Patti Pearson

A former tenured high school teacher of French and Spanish, Patti has worked at NYU/Tisch since 1996 as an Administrator and Adjunct Faculty. In 2016, she started working at the all-school level for the first time in the Office of Strategic Initiatives which built on the work she did in the Kanbar Institute of Film & Television, first in the Office of the Chair of the Graduate Film Program until 1998 when she transitioned to Special Projects in the Kanbar Institute of Film & Television. In 2003, she took on the additional responsibilities of managing the Office of the Associate Dean of the Kanbar Institute and Skirball Center for New Media.

In Strategic Initiatives, she works closely with Senior Associate Dean Sheril Antonio and Tisch Special Programs focusing on New Initiatives and High School Programs, specifically the Future Artists Programs which are free classes offered in the spring semester in eight of our Undergraduate Departments: Cinema Studies, Dance, Drama, Dramatic Writing, Filmmaking, Games, Photography & Imaging, and Recorded Music.

In the Kanbar Institute, Patti was instrumental in establishing the Richard Vague Film Production Fund, an annual award given to alumni of the Kanbar Institute to produce their first feature films. She oversaw the Future Filmmakers and Summer Filmmakers Workshops for high school students to take college-level courses at the Tisch School of the Arts and served as the departmental representative to the Dean’s Talent Initiative Program, a nation-wide recruitment program for students who may not otherwise have access to NYU/Tisch. She created the syllabus for and taught Arts & Culture, the 2-point companion course for that program which she also taught in 2015 to students enrolled in the NYU Abu Dhabi/Tisch/Image Nation Young Filmmakers Program. She was one of the organizers of the Next Reel International Film Festival, the Tisch School’s biannual festival of international film schools, which has been held in Florence, Italy, New York, and Singapore.

She is the liaison to NYU / Tisch for the Artistic Director of the Graduate Film Program, Professor Spike Lee, and arranges meetings and advisement appointments for him.