Lara Taylor understands pressure and commitment. She has had to balance being a student athlete in field hockey, which puts a lot of pressure on her to consistently perform at her very best—and make an enormous travel and time commitment—with being an art scholar, which requires a lot of time and space to think. Lara has succeeded at both.
About to graduate with a Bachelor of Art in Art with a Visual Studies concentration, Lara has been recognized on the Dean’s list for several semester and has earned several awards. She was CAA Academic Scholar of Distinction in fall 2024, was on the CAA Commissioner’s Academic Honor Roll for three years, received the Hudson Architects Architectural Illustration Award in 2021, and exceled in athletics, securing a spot on several CAA teams.
Lara has had positive impact on the Northeastern community. Her co-ops involved working in communications in the Office of City and Community Engagement, where she said she had the chance to “get out and connect with people in the community and learn about the neighborhoods surrounding Northeastern.” She directed social media content creation, photographed community events, designed original merchandise and marketing materials, and developed a strategic social media audit that improved engagement across LinkedIn, Instagram, and Facebook accounts. Additionally, she developed unique marketing campaigns for the Mission Hill Community Swap and the Annual Food Drive.
Her volunteer work included distributing food packages for Fenway Cares and create branding materials for events hosted by local organizations. During her co-op, she became familiar with the New England Musicians Resource Fund and continues to support marketing for the organization. While in Norwich, UK during the summer of 2025, Lara lead the design of promotional materials for the “Come Together” charity exhibition, part of the Beatles’ Through the Lens Exhibition. Also in Norwich, Lara worked at Christian Taylor Consulting LTD, where she designed the company logo and assisted with the website design.
Of all her achievements, Lara is proudest of her Honors in the Discipline project. Associate Professor of Creative Media Sarah Kanouse supervised the project, a video installation looking at climate change as a hyper object. “I feel it represents my strongest artwork conceptually and technically,” Lara says. “The research that went into it has been instrumental in me discovering who I want to be as an artist.”
Professor Kanouse says Lara’s “work and volunteer contributions reflect the same impulse that drives her art—a conviction that images, objects, and forms have consequences, and that the role of the artist is to make those consequences visible.”
After graduation, Lara will begin a master’s of science program in Environment, Culture and Society at the University of Edinburgh—a highly competitive program that requires students to hold an “Honours” undergraduate degree designation.
