Tracie Costantino earned her undergraduate degree in art history and Italian studies at Boston College and her master’s degree in art history from Brown University. In 2005 she completed her PhD in aesthetic education (curriculum and instruction) from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Before CalArts, Costantino served as the interim Provost, Dean of Faculty and Associate Provost of Teaching and Learning at RISD, and prior to RISD was on the faculty at the University of Georgia for nine years.
Her teaching abilities have been recognized through the Richard B. Russell Award for Undergraduate Teaching, the General Sandy Beaver Teaching Professorship and participation in the Lilly Teaching Fellows program at the University of Georgia. Costantino's research focuses on the nature of cognition in the arts, creativity, and the transformative potential of aesthetic experience as an educative event. Her interest in interdisciplinary curriculum, STEAM, and creative learning has been supported by two grants from the National Science Foundation. In addition to numerous published articles and book chapters, Costantino has co-edited two books on aesthetic education: Essays on Aesthetic Education for the 21st Century (Sense Publishers, 2010) and Aesthetics, Empathy, and Education (Peter Lang Publishers, 2013).