Departmental Teaching Excellence Awards
onCAMPUS
11-16-2004
By: Susan Wittstock
The Department of Theatre and the Department of Spanish and Portuguese each were honored with a 2004 University Departmental Teaching Excellence Award. The award, which comes with a $50,000 grant, recognizes their commitment to excellence in teaching and learning, self-evaluation of teaching and learning quality, development of faculty teaching and provision of resources for students.
In the Department of Theatre, teaching doesn’t fit neatly into a school day.
For Joy Reilly, it means taking every other Saturday to spend several hours advising students in a writing workshop, nurturing them as they write original drama. For Dan Gray, it means taking a 10-day trip to Cuba, shepherding 16 students through museums and theaters and leading them in conversations with some of Cuba’s most prominent artists. For Mary Tarantino, it means finding the funding to establish a Moving Lights Laboratory so students have exposure to the best technology in the business and taking the time each year to teach a new batch of students how to use the equipment.
For those efforts, and many more, theatre was given the university’s Departmental Teaching Excellence Award last spring.
“I felt we needed to apply because so many things
have happened in the last eight or nine years in the department that focus
on teaching,” said Lesley Ferris, chair of theatre.
Changes like redesigning the MFA acting degree, which now offers students
the rare chance to specialize in creating new work. International connections
also have increased, as students travel with classmates and faculty to Prague,
London and Cuba, and international artists from far and wide travel here for
guest residencies. The department now offers awards to honor the teaching
abilities of TAs, recently created an extensive Web site for Theatre 100 students,
and encourages professors to mentor their students as they seek professional
positions.
Ferris said a key component to the teaching successes of her faculty is a simple one. “We listen to our students,” she said. “What I mean by that is we have a standing student advisory committee to the chair and I meet once a quarter with students, but also students are on all of our committees.”
Student input helped push the department to create a New Works Lab, a theater space used to create and present new drama. Student feedback about a series of required courses each worth only three credits led to the department offering the courses for five credits. “They felt the work they did was worth five credits, and we agreed,” Ferris said. And, students were a big part of the decision to start hosting an annual end-of-the-year celebration, which is followed by a student-run revue that raises money for AIDS.
One of the biggest changes in the department is the focus on developing new works, at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. Eight years ago, the department began offering two spots a year to MFA acting students who could focus on new works. In their third year, instead of playing a role in a play, writing about it and researching it, they would create their own performance. The concept proved popular, and now, all MFA acting students, 10 recruited every three years, will follow the new works track, developing works in their second and third years. The first group started last year.
“We’re one of the first in the country to have a new works emphasis for an MFA,” said Jeanine Thompson, associate professor of theatre. Thompson, who spent 12 years as a solo performer prior to coming to Ohio State, spearheaded the effort to offer more of a focus on creating works because it gives graduates more professional opportunities.
Many of the artists presented by the Wexner Center are performing original work, much of it as soloists, and almost all of them spend some time with students while on campus.
“The guest residencies is a big thing we’ve developed,” Ferris said. “I think it is unusual to get so many guest artists a year.” Either this year, or recently, Marcel Marceau, Adrienne Kennedy, Robert Post, Anne Bogart and the Royal Court Theatre, among others, have conducted workshops and classes in conjunction with performances.
International programs are a priority for Ferris, who established a bi-annual London theater program that gives students five weeks to live, eat and breathe theater through seminars, lectures and performances. OSU connections help. “We have an alumna who is managing director of the Royal Court Theatre. So, every time we go there, Diane Borger gives us a wonderful tour and we’ve also been able to have some internships for our lighting students,” Ferris said. They also attend the London Nottinghill Gate Carnival, a huge theatrical event in which students get to view behind-the-scenes preparations and participate. “We have a relationship with one of the carnival designers, and quite a number of our students have done internships with her.”
The department also taught a course on Cuban culture, in partnership with the Department of Comparative Studies, that culminated in a trip to Cuba. The course was offered twice, but is currently in limbo due to a recent U.S. Department of State policy that cancelled all educational trips to Cuba. New requirements have also made it hard for Cuban artists to get visas to come to Ohio.
“We also have an exchange with The Academy of Performing Arts in Prague,” Ferris said, through which Czech artist Petr Matásek is in residence Nov. 14-19, and has works on view in Metaphor and Irony 2, an exhibition on campus of Czech theater design, co-curated by Joseph Brandesky, professor of theatre.
The department has spent $20,000 of its $50,000 prize upgrading two classrooms to “smart rooms,” with the latest in technical equipment, and is in discussion this quarter with students and faculty on how to spend the remaining $30,000. “The students are saying things like ‘offer grants for international travel,’ which is something we don’t have,” Ferris said. “I think those kinds of opportunities are so important in the theater world to do.”
Students and alumni who submitted letters of support for the department’s award application praised the insights their professors have about the professional world of theater, and the extra effort many of them make to get them internships or help them find professional positions. With nearly 200 undergraduates and 35 or so graduate students, faculty still manage to forge close connections with the students.
Thompson, who joined Ohio State in 1994, said the chance to put down roots as a teacher was very appealing to her. “I wanted to see what would happen if I could really invest in one group of people for a period of years,” she said. “Seeing that first spark of ‘Ah ha!’ in a student when they first get a concept, seeing how that develops over time, and then seeing how they teach me, and I start having ‘Ah ha!’ moments. I can’t imagine being anywhere else.”
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