In 2009, during her first month of graduate school at the University of South Florida, Megan Hildebrandt was diagnosed with Hodgkin lymphoma, a cancer that affects the body’s immune system. At only 24, she had to navigate treatments while starting her master’s degree in studio art.

Her cancer was declared in remission in 2011, and Hildebrandt graduated in 2012. But the experience had a lasting effect on how she works with her students.

“Once you’ve been through something like that, you tend to be a bit more empathic and compassionate towards others,” says Hildebrandt, now the director of the First-Year Core Program at UT’s College of Fine Arts. “Yes, I want them to be good artists, but I want them to be fully realized people.”

Hildebrandt believes one can be a serious art educator while also taking a more lighthearted approach in hopes of creating more personal connections.

“There’s a huge place for humor in learning,” Hildebrandt says. “I think warmth and having a good sense of humor can make learning stick more.”

In an attempt to build a community with her students, she takes them on field trips that not only allow art students an opportunity to explore the city but also offer a chance to meet one another. “I love seeing the weird art kids find each other. It’s one of the best feelings as an educator,” Hildebrandt says.

She had to grow up quickly due to the timing of her cancer diagnosis, she says. Consequently, she has a better understanding of how college students feel as they move from high school to college.

To accommodate college students struggling with that transition, Hildebrandt considers her former mentors and their methods of working with young adults. While teaching at a fine arts boarding school in Michigan, her boss, Mindy Ronayne, taught her not to assume that her students have no problems outside the classroom.

“I think (it’s about) not isolating students to an empty receptacle for us to fill with our knowledge,” Hildebrandt says. “They are living, breathing humans with lived experiences, a lot going on and a lot of different life experiences than I’ve had.”

Beyond her efforts to make the program more personal, Hildebrandt has also strived to make academic improvements. First-year studio art, art history, and art education majors take different coursework, and the first-year program was missing a system that gives students and faculty a chance to measure improvement.

“We now require this end-of-course (evaluation) where they submit three of their favorite works from each core class. Then they write what went well, what was the challenge and what they want to do next year,” Hildebrandt says. “Students started to take more charge of what their sophomore year would look like. It’s going really well, and it was pretty seamless. It brought us in line with a lot of other comparable institutions, so that’s a big deal.”

Hildebrandt was awarded a Dads’ Association Centennial Teaching Fellowship for the 2024-2025 school year, an honor given to faculty members who teach freshmen.

“It casts a spotlight on our department in a really positive way and the importance of the first-year experience because it’s only an award that honors faculty who work their hardest with the first-year (students),” Hildebrandt says. “For my colleagues, I think it’s helped them see that teaching matters a lot to me. It’s really overall good for our department.”

The lessons that she’s learned about how to nurture first-year students have intertwined with her personal life as a mother of two children, June and Ernie. Her experience with cancer, too, helps guide her through the challenges of motherhood.

“I had June in 2013, so that was pretty exciting because a lot of young adults, when they go through chemo, their fertility is super compromised,” Hildebrandt says. “Pregnancy after cancer is very interesting because all of a sudden my body was doing things, like growing something positive.”

Hildebrandt’s artwork has also changed since having children. Her focus after her cancer remission was making drawings and a graphic novel that capture different aspects of being a young adult facing cancer or anyone related to the issue. Hildebrandt wanted to find a community of others who were like her. After having kids, the pieces remained autobiographical, but instead focused on her children.

Although it remains a challenge to balance motherhood and her job as a faculty member at UT, Hildebrandt uses her artmaking to build community and encourage empathy.

In her office, many pieces on display are based on her two kids or her husband, Peter Abrami, an artist who also teaches at UT. Hildebrandt says being married to an artist allows the two to support each other and have someone who understands the importance of each other’s work.

“It’s a time in my life where everything feels like it’s moving really fast. Right now, it’s hard, but I really want my students to see me as an artist who is a mother and a professor,” Hildebrandt says. “Back in my day, I think there was one or two people with kids that were female art professors, and you still had to choose. So I’m trying to chip away at that for the next generation.”