Dr. Savage currently serves as Promotion & Tenure Chair in the Department of Arts Administration, Education & Policy. She was Undergraduate Education, Teaching & Assessment Chair from 2011-2024. As Undergraduate Chair, she oversaw programming and curriculum for both the BA in Art Education (BAE) and the Arts Management (AM) major. Shari has served twice as a Dean’s Appointee for the Arts & Sciences Curriculum Committee, reviewing and approving curricular and program changes at the university level. Dr. Savage also served as FIT Faculty Mentor for new OSU faculty and as a STEP mentor for second-year students at OSU. 

Shari scholarship centers on representations of sexualized girlhood in popular culture, including the “Lolita genre” in media and Lewis Carroll’s Victorian era photographs of young girls. Her research considers the ways in which culture produces visual narratives of innocence and desirability through media representations that promote eroticized girls. Her research practice includes mixed-media art works that critically investigate and challenge the representations she writes about. Her arts-based research images are often published alongside her scholarly work and have been selected for exhibition at The Macy Gallery, Columbia University, the McDonough Contemporary Art Museum, and Urban Arts Space. Mentoring in higher education is another research interest and she seeks opportunities to work with and mentor students at all stages of their academic journey. A recent publication, Mentoring Future Academics: College Teaching in the Visual Arts, co-authored with former graduate student Dr. Erin Hoppe, highlights the mentoring outcomes of Shari’s AE 7300 College Teaching course. 

Shari presents her research at numerous national conferences and her scholarship appears in peer-reviewed publications such as Art Education, The Journal of Cultural Research in Art Education, Visual Arts Research, Visual Culture & Gender, and Studies in Art Education. She has authored book chapters in Terry Barrett’s Criticizing Art, and Paul Duncum’s Visual Culture in the Art Classroom, and InSEA’s Borderless: Global Narratives in Art Education. Dr. Savage has reviewed for Studies in Art Education, Visual Culture & Gender, Journal of Cultural Research in Art Education, Art Education, and the International Journal for Education & the Arts. 

Shari recently served as a scholarly expert and contributor for Bond & Grace Publishers newest art novel which focuses on Lewis Carroll’s children’s books Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass (Forthcoming fall 2024). An original artwork created for the novel was commissioned by the publisher and is featured in the art novel’s introduction. 

Dr. Savage received the Dr. Kenneth Marantz Award for Distinguished Alumni; the Dr. Manuel Barkan Fellowship Award in Recognition of Scholarly Excellence; and the Ronald & Deborah Ratner Award for Distinguished Teaching in the Arts & Humanities.