Ronda Wright, MFA

Ronda returned to UT to join the College of Architecture and Design as the Academic & Professional Development Advisor & Adj Asst Professor. While she is an alum of the School of Art earning a BFA in Sculpture & Photography, she was a member of three award winning design build teams with the College of Architecture and Design while here at UT.

Before heading to NY for graduate school and earning her MFA in Sculpture & Dimensional Studies at Alfred University, NYSCC & The National Casting Centers for Metal and Glass, she owned a design studio in Knoxville specializing in metal forging, fabrication and casting creating and collaborating on private and public commissions. She’s traveled nationally and internationally creating large scale public sculpture to the intimate spaces of furniture and Architectural interaction and facilitating workshops using the medium of iron to discuss equity and inclusion.

“I am dedicated to empowering inclusive learning environments, defined holistically through an intersectional social justice lens and informed by my experience as an educator, advisor, advocate, artist and mentor. Valuing that interdisciplinary collaboration is key to inclusive practices dedicated towards eliminating harmful bias and discrimination, creating opportunities and advances in critical conversations and initiatives that promote inclusion, equity, and social justice on campus and beyond.”

She serves on four DEI committees for the College and University, chairing the Trans & Non Binary committee for the Chancellor’s Commission for LGBT people. Nearly a decade ago she founded a social justice platform: SAFE – Social Action For Equality, facilitating a series of national workshops titled Creating Artifacts of Home currently an ongoing project with participants from all over the world. Started in response to the overwhelming rate of LGBTQ+ homelessness, bullying, and suicide, the premise of these workshops are that we all have a relation to home; and that iron, is an element necessary to sustain life. While engaging in conversation, participants create a symbolic artifact that reminds them of home, the artifact is then cast in iron and installed as part of a larger collection of artifacts that reflect relations of Home.