My work as an educator has been primarily focused on courses related to developing skills in and understanding of the Performing Arts, particularly in relation to the Musical Theatre. I have worked to have the Musical Theatre Curriculum grow and adapt as the world of Musical Theatre and our students have changed over time. My work initially was engaged in taking the proposed BA in Musical Theatre and molding it to be an effective course of training and research that would give our students the understanding and skills required for success. In collaboration with my colleagues we changed curriculum, defined specific goals for the courses, assessed how our students success in the professional theatre and continued to adapt and refine the BA program. As our department and program has developed over time, it became clear that for our program to continue to prosper and grow into a nationally recognized program of excellence, we would need to develop a Bachelor of Fine arts degree program in Musical Theatre. I took the lead on creating and developing the new curriculum again in collaboration with my colleagues in performing arts. Our successful completion of that degree program, and its subsequent approval and addition to the degrees offered at SUNY Cortland, has raised the visibility and enabled us to offer our students a program focused on their performing skills while still getting an excellent liberal arts college education.
My approach to teaching is always the quest to ignite and inspire the love of our art form, but also the love and desire for knowledge. I encourage students to be ever inquisitive and excited about the intricacies of a particular scene, or the way the body can express volumes, without uttering a single word. Although I teach in a variety of the performing arts disciplines (dance, acting, directing, choreography, music) the essence for all my teaching is the same. I strive to have each scholar/artist find their own unique spark of creativity and inspiration. My quest is to help them nurture that spark and fulfill their own, unique potential as an artist and as a human.
My course approach and content is driven by the particular students in the course, particularly as we move to the upper division courses. The choice of materials and approach is dictated by the qualities in the students I mentioned earlier. Of course, the most extensive alteration of approach to coursework was the required move to an online delivery of classes. The technical challenge was significant and colleagues in the department, across campus and across the nation, all discovered and learned and shared our ideas, success and failures in managing essentially uncharted waters of virtual performing arts education. It really made me assess the essentials concepts and skills that each course had as learning outcomes, and then challenged me to find the best way to achieve them in a virtual world. Although some of the original SLOs for the course had limited success, most of my students seemed to be able to make the connections to the work and grow as artists and find a way to flourish in this rocky ground.
Another way in which my courses have changed is a reaction to our new mission to work towards dismantling systemic bias and work diligently toward an inclusive, Anti-Racist environment. MY own personal search and assessment of my own white privilege and my efforts to educate myself in the reality of systemic racism, lead me to asses my courses as well as my own personal actions. Thoughtful cultural considerations in choices of theatrical material assigned and working to find material that can celebrate and encourage our young artist of color, has become a core value of my approach to the course work. For example, last semester I found video recordings of musical theater productions (Jelly’s Last Jam and Shuffle Along….) created by and about Black Musical Theatre Artists. I included both performance footage and “behind the scenes” video presentations as the assignments for discussion and their writing work for the semester. Universally this was a learning experience well received by all my students (and for me as well).
I have included a list of the courses I have taught (many multiple times) here at SUNY Cortland, as well as some representative course documents and student CTEs. I feel this will provide support for the depth and quality of my teaching.
Courses Taught at SUNY Cortland Since Promotion to Associate Professor:
DNC 102 Jazz Dance 1
DNC 302 Jazz Dance 2
DNC 423 Theatre Dance 1
DNC 424 Theatre Dance 2
DNC 429 Choreography and Improvisation
THT 120 Acting 1
THT 220 Acting 2
THT 325 The Working Actor
THT 329. Scene Study
THT 231 Fundamentals in Musical Theatre
THT331 Musical Theatre Performance 1
THT 430. Musical Theatre Performance 2
THT 432 Directing