question: Is the University where Edward M. Brownlee became the first recipient of a Master of Fine Arts degree a public or private school?
answer: public
context: Title: Ralph Angel
  Passage: Ralph Angel (born 1951) is a second-generation American of Sephardic Jewish descent, born in Seattle, Washington.  He attended inner-city public schools there, and, while working freight trains for the Union Pacific Railroad, earned his Bachelor of Arts degree at the University of Washington.  He received a Master of Fine Arts degree at the University of California, Irvine, and has lived in and around Los Angeles ever since.  He is currently Edith R. White Distinguished Professor at the University of Redlands, and a member of the MFA in Writing faculty at Vermont College of Fine Arts.
  Title: Edward M. Brownlee
  Passage: Edward Malcolm Brownlee is an American sculptor who is known for his modernist architectural creations.  "Mick" Brownlee was born in Portland, Oregon, on April 23, 1929, and grew up there on the west side in a dilapidated neighborhood where he found many remnants of building materials lying about and began making constructions from them.  He joined the Army after three years of high school and was stationed overseas in occupied Japan working as a topographer.  Brownlee received his formal education at Oregon State University and at the California College of Arts and Crafts.  In 1954, he became the first recipient of a Master of Fine Arts degree from the University of Hawaii.  The Hawaii chapter of the American Institute of Architects recognized Brownlee with a special award for “outstanding contributions of art to architecture”.  He maintained a studio on the Oregon Coast and worked in carved stone and cast bronze until his death on November 24, 2013. 
  Title: Pat Boas
  Passage: Pat Boas is a contemporary artist living in Portland, Oregon.  She holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from Pacific Northwest College of Art and a Master of Fine Arts degree from Portland State University, where she currently teaches and serves as the Director of the School of Art + Design.
  Title: Li Hongbo
  Passage: Li Hongbo () is an artist born in China’s Jilin province in 1974.  He earned his Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from Jilin Normal University in 1996, Master of Fine Arts (MFA) degree in Folk Art in 2001, MFA degree in Experimental Art in 2010, both from the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing.  Li Hongbo is best known for his lifelike paper sculptures, made entirely out of paper and glue.  His work has been exhibited in museums around the world.
  Title: Sarah Hobbs
  Passage: Sarah Hobbs is an American born artist in Lynchburg, Virginia in 1970.  Hobbs got her Bachelor of Fine Arts in art history at University of Georgia, Athens, Georgia in 1992 and her Master of Fine Arts degree in photography in 2000 at the University of Georgia as well.  Currently she is living and working in Atlanta.  In 2003 she was a finalist for an award known as the Forward Arts Foundation Emerging Artist Award.  Her work has been exhibited in important public collections such as the Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois; The Brooklyn Museum of Art, Brooklyn, New York; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, California; and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas, her work has been traveling since 1998.  Hobbs creates the psychological still lives/states and photographs them as large scale color images.  Her photos are taken on a 4x5 camera as seen in the series "Small Problems in Living" (1999-2004).  These scenes are set up in Hobb's home or a close friends, they are made to be dreamlike.  "Sarah Hobbs’s work explores and gives form to various human behaviors and compulsions.  She carefully stages and photographs scenes that are meant to embody phobias, neuroses, and obsessions.  Her intricate tableaus are simultaneously profound and witty, reflecting Hobbs’s understanding of human psychology."  - Katherine A. Bussard, Assistant Curator of Photography at The Art Institute of Chicago.
  Title: Linda Threadgill
  Passage: Linda Threadgill (born 1947) is an American artist whose primary emphasis is metalsmithing.  Born in Corpus Christi, TX, her early interests in art explored both ceramics and painting.  She became interested in working with metal while an undergraduate, and received a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the University of Georgia in 1970, where she studied with noted American metalsmith Robert Ebendorf.  A portfolio of work based on her experimentation with photo-etching and electroforming led her to study with innovative metalsmith Stanley Lechtzin at the Tyler School of Art in Philadelphia, where she was awarded the Teaching Assistantship in the Metals Department, and earned a Master of Fine Arts degree in 1978.  In 1979, she was awarded a Florida Fine Arts Council Individual Artist Fellowship based on her studio work.  Later this same year, she was invited to join the faculty of the Art Department at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater.  In 1983 she was named a Distinguished Member of the Society of North American Goldsmiths, and in 1984, received a National Endowment for the Arts Visual Arts Fellowship.  In 1994, she received the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater Chancellor's Award for Outstanding Research.  During her tenure on the faculty of the University of Wisconsin, she also received 11 University of Wisconsin Faculty Research Grants, and was awarded the University of Wisconsin Outstanding Research Award in 1987, 1995 and 1999.  She served as a Craftsman Trustee to the American Craft Council from 1996-1999, and in 2000, she was designated Trustee Emerita.  In 2001, she was named an Artisan Member of the Society of American Silversmiths.  She headed the Metals Program at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater from 1979-2003, and is Professor Emerita.  In 2005 she was named a Fellow of the American Craft Council.
  Title: University of Hawaii
  Passage: The University of Hawaiʻi system (formally the University of Hawaiʻi and popularly known as U.H.) is a public, co-educational college and university system that confers associate, bachelor's, master's, and doctoral degrees through three university campuses, seven community college campuses, an employment training center, three university centers, four education centers and various other research facilities distributed across six islands throughout the State of Hawaii in the United States.  All schools of the University of Hawaii system are accredited by the Western Association of Schools and Colleges.  The U.H. system's main administrative offices are located on the property of the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa in Honolulu CDP.
  Title: Vermont College of Fine Arts
  Passage: Vermont College of Fine Arts (VCFA) is a graduate-level fine arts institution in Montpelier, Vermont.  VCFA is a national center for graduate fine arts education with a unique practice-based learning model, internationally renowned faculty, and a range of delivery models — including low residency, intensive conference retreats, and fully residential programs.  VCFA educates emerging and established artists through the offering of six low residency Master of Fine Arts degrees in the following fields: Writing, Writing for Children & Young Adults, Visual Art, Music Composition, Graphic Design and Film; a residential Master of Fine Arts degree in Writing and Publishing; low residency Master of Arts in Teaching in Art and Design Education; and a low residency Master of Arts in Art and Design Education.  Its faculty includes Pulitzer Prize finalists, National Book Award winners, Newbery Medal honorees, Guggenheim Fellowship and Fulbright Program fellows, and Ford Foundation grant recipients.
citations: Edward M. Brownlee University of Hawaii