Students pour their hearts into artworks and writing they enter in the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards.

The Fort Wayne Museum of Art has been working hard to make sure that effort gets recognized in national Scholastic judging.

“This is a good program,” said Charles Shepard, museum executive director. “If we all put a little more into it, you get a great national art program.”

The first step toward students' national success will take place at 1 p.m. Sunday, when the museum honors regional winners at an awards ceremony at the Grand Wayne Convention Center. Winners also are listed in today's Ticket! section, and their art and writing go on display Saturday at the Museum of Art.

Shepard wanted to get involved in the local Scholastic Art and Writing Awards program after becoming art museum director in July 2003.

He had fond memories of reading Scholastic books as a young student, he said, and he had served as a national judge for the Scholastic Art Awards.

He inherited a program run by volunteers, a few of whom wanted to retire, he said. He asked to take over the program because he then could use museum staff to help plan and operate it.

“As the museum has embraced us, it has allowed us to focus on getting the best work out of our students,” said Vicki Junk-Wright, a local artist and art teacher at Canterbury High School, who formerly helped coordinate the Scholastic Art Awards as a volunteer.

Changes initiated by the museum include:

♦Shepard enlarged the Scholastic volunteer committee and filled it largely with teachers.

♦He moved display of Scholastic Art and Writing winners to the art museum's main galleries rather than a small, out-of-the-way education gallery.

♦Museum staff talked with area colleges to increase the number of art scholarships offered to students who participate.

♦The museum worked to get more students and schools to participate. That includes paying all but $1 of students' Scholastic entry fee of $5 per piece. The museum also makes resource materials available to teachers, picks up entries and takes winning artworks to schools so students see what they need to do well in judging.

♦A key change also involved setting up the regional judging panels to include an art teacher from the grade level being judged, a local college art professor and a professional artist working in the art medium being judged. Panel members' expertise helps them identify the outstanding work, which then does better during national judging, Shepard said.

The Fort Wayne Museum of Art's regional judging this year drew 2,240 entries from 58 counties in northeast and central Indiana and western Ohio. The 2009 participation number represents a 49 percent increase from the 1,500 entries the museum reported receiving in 2004, but is down slightly from the 2,494 entries received in 2008.

Encouraging more students to participate increases the odds of finding high-quality art that will do well in national judging, Shepard said.

“What I see is the quality of work getting better and better,” agreed Teresa Nagel, art teacher at Kekionga Middle School.

That improvement includes not only the art selected for display in the Scholastic show at the Fort Wayne Museum of Art, but also the work that doesn't make it into the show, Nagel said.

The higher caliber of art also has registered at the national level, Shepard said.

Since the museum took over coordinating the area Scholastic Art and Writing Awards, the number of national awards earned by Fort Wayne regional winners has increased each year to 20 awards last year from six in 2004, the museum reported.

That success propelled the Fort Wayne region to a 12th-best ranking nationally last year out of 90 regionals, compared with a 60th-best ranking in 2004, said Max Meyer, the museum's curator of children and family programs.

Students who win national awards typically receive more in scholarship offers than students who don't succeed in national judging, Shepard said.

Scholastic and other art programs also benefit the community and country in other ways, Junk-Wright said.

“This isn't just about bringing back ribbons,” she said. “It's about teaching kids to use their whole brains.”

Schools spend a lot of time teaching children logical thinking and drilling them on information that will appear on tests, Junk-Wright said. That doesn't leave much time for activities that foster creative thinking and problem solving.

Art exercises that creative right side of the brain, she said. And from that creative side, she added, will come the ideas that keep America on top in the world.