Sarah Whaley Hill gazed as the New Mexico sun slipped below the horizon, disappearing from her patio view atop the Sangre de Cristo Mountains.
In the quiet that settled over the desert, she reflected on the two weeks of writing, exploring and discovering a place unlike anywhere she’d ever been.
She also realized something else had changed.
“I feel like I’m finally figuring out who I am as a writer,” said the secondary education student from North Texas. “With everything that happens during college and all the challenges of finding yourself, being out in the desert and the mountains made it an incredible place to grow.”
Whaley Hill was one of several Oklahoma State University students who spent part of their summer at the Doel Reed Center in Taos, New Mexico, participating in an immersive creative writing course led by Stephanie Choi, an assistant professor of English.
“As a land-grant university whose mission is to serve the public through education and make opportunities for students as equitable as possible, I think the Doel Reed Center is a huge resource for students who may have never studied away before or had chances to travel.”
As students explored northern New Mexico’s art, history and culture, they transformed those experiences into poems, essays and reflections, discovering new confidence with every piece they shared.
Whaley Hill arrived expecting a class that satisfied her English 4000 requirement. She left with a clearer sense of who she wanted to become as a person and future educator.
That kind of transformation isn’t accidental. It’s the legacy of the artist whose name the center bears.
When Doel Reed joined Oklahoma A&M College in 1924, later becoming head of the art department, he believed the best education happened beyond classroom instruction.
While he taught drawing as the foundation of artistic practice, he urged students to observe the natural world, trust their own perspectives and create from experiences rather than copying something they saw.
Eventually, Reed found that inspiration in Taos, where the Southwest’s landscape became signature to his artwork and his method of teaching. During his time in Stillwater, Reed took several sabbaticals to enhance his work, sometimes in Europe and a little closer to home — Taos, New Mexico. When he retired in 1959, he relocated to Taos.
Twenty years ago, his daughter, Martha, ensured that vision would continue when she gifted OSU the family home and studio, which established the Doel Reed Center.
Today, students don’t simply study in Taos; they experience it. No matter the area of study, the desert continues to do what it once did for Doel Reed: expand perspectives, inspire creativity and change lives.
That philosophy reaches far beyond the arts.
As Clark Bigler hiked the Amole Canyon South Loop, the freshman biology pre-med student from Tulsa paused to listen.
Before seeing a Western Tanager sitting on a branch, he identified the bird by its sound. Nearby, his classmates identified a blue fungus beetle crawling across the forest floor as the wind blew the sweet maple syrup scent of a ponderosa pine in the breeze.
For Bigler’s biology class — led by Dr. Neil Gilbert, a biology assistant professor — the daily hikes weren’t about covering miles. They were about learning to observe the natural world with patience and curiosity, the same approach Reed encouraged.
Planning for a career in dentistry, Bigler never expected one of his most memorable college experiences would involve turning over logs to study lizards in the mountains of Northern New Mexico.
“Without the Doel Reed scholarship, I wouldn’t have been able to do this,” Bigler said. “I’m so grateful and thankful for this opportunity, because I know this has changed my whole perspective, and it’s made my experience with OSU so much greater.”
Once again, this place changed someone.
That’s the value the Doel Reed Center provides for the land-grant mission.
“As a land-grant university whose mission is to serve the public through education and make opportunities for students as equitable as possible, I think the Doel Reed Center is a huge resource for students who may have never studied away before or had chances to travel — even though New Mexico may seem close enough to Oklahoma, for many students, it is their first time to New Mexico,” Choi said. “And thanks to scholarships from generous donors, students can have an immersive travel and learning experience without having to pay thousands of dollars.
“The center not only offers classes, but cultural experiences that students would not have access to without the center being in Taos. Students are exposed to and experience the vibrant arts and cultural communities of Taos in ways that are invaluable.
For two decades, the Doel Reed Center has served as an active learning environment where students discover how creativity is shaped by the landscapes, culture and people that surround them.
Today, the center offers immersive three-credit-hour study-away courses for OSU students alongside Leisure Learning programs that invite lifelong learners from around the world to experience the art, culture and history of northern New Mexico.
Anyone can come to Taos.
Anyone can create.
Anyone can discover.
Anyone can be changed by education.
That’s exactly what Director Andy Mattern hopes the next 20 years will bring.
“I definitely want to continue what we’ve been doing, which is to offer these varieties of programs,” said Mattern, the Vennerberg Chair in Art and an associate professor of photography in the Department of Art, Graphic Design and Art History. “But then also kind of zoom out a little bit and just ask, what else is possible?”
Whether that means expanding course offerings, exploring new program formats or creating opportunities for more people to experience Taos, Mattern sees the center’s future as an extension of the same philosophy that shaped Reed’s teaching a century ago.
“There’s so much that we even don’t know, but to me, art making is just so evidently part of what it means to be human,” Mattern said. “This is something that we’ve been doing forever.”
What began as three adobe buildings where Reed lived, taught and created has become a place where generations of Cowboys discover something about themselves.
Twenty years later, the Doel Reed Center continues to prove that education is about more than earning credit hours. It’s about seeing the world differently, finding confidence in your own perspective and realizing that, beneath the endless New Mexico sky, your dreams can be just as expansive.
Photos by: Eric Priddy
Story by: Sydney Trainor | STATE Magazine