ENVISIONING THE FUTURE OF THEATRE DESIGN AND PRODUCTION AT MICHIGAN

ENVISIONING THE FUTURE OF THEATRE DESIGN AND PRODUCTION AT MICHIGAN

Academic Year:
2019 - 2020 (June 1, 2019 through May 31, 2020)
Funding Requested:
$10,000.00
Project Dates:
-
Applicant(s):
Overview of the Project:
This Gilbert Whitaker Grant will facilitate the means to engage an external reviewer, develop surveys for recent alumni, and provide a small stipend to each of the participating faculty members so we can dedicate ourselves to revamp, and to learn ourselves, best practices moving forward. No such holistic review has been conducted, and we want to ensure certain content is covered over a four year period as well as identify and eliminate any redundancies. A series of retreats with current faculty, reviewers, and a student rep would work to identify short and long term goals, to articulate the mission of our academic area, brainstorm new courses and sequencing, and develop job descriptions for open faculty lines. The second phase of this grant period would then loop in new faculty members as we take a deeper dive into our actual teaching spaces. We wish to examine our own teaching practices and think critically about how we can best serve the students and the department as a whole- all with the overarching goal of fostering a rigorous and inclusive learning environment for our undergraduate students.
Final Report Fields
Project Objectives:
  • By engaging external reviewers, student and alumni surveys, and facilitated conversations with current students, examine our own teaching practices and think critically about how we can best serve the students and the department as a whole with the goal of fostering a rigorous and inclusive learning environment for our undergraduate students.
  • Partner with upper administration to examine equitable teaching practices across the whole department (initially just the area) and identify ways to streamline course offerings to reduce chronic uncompensated teaching overloads.
  • Revitalize the curriculum informed by a mission statement and expertise of new faculty members.
Project Achievements:
  • Successful external review (full report “a” attached) conducted Jan/Feb 2021
  • Successful teaching equity audit- this was completed in my role as interim chair of the Dept of Theatre & Drama AY 21/22 and benefits the entire T&D faculty, not just the Design and Production area. (pdf of working doc “b” attached)
  • Two area curriculum retreats- the first in Fall 2020 to identify priorities for immediate curriculum updates and hiring initiatives; new faculty member, Sarah Oliver joined that first meeting. The second retreat in Spring 2022 convened to develop a mission statement and discuss additional curriculum updates; this included the THREE new faculty members (Fialko, Judge & Han)
  • Courses:
    • Pilot of Research Methodology course offered each Winter term
    • Reconfigurations of applied teaching spaces (Theatre shops & labs), THTREMUS 250 in particular
Continuation:
Ongoing work includes memos to SMTD CDR and supporting U-M CARFs to implement additional updates to the curriculum:
- Reducing the number of seminar credits
- Adding an upper level “preparation for the profession”
- Identifying traditional 3 credits courses that can be “chunked” into 1 credit modules
- Clarify learning objectives of each practicum level, and implement consistency across concentrations
Dissemination:
All of the curricular work (mission statement and the updated “silent advisor”) will be reflected in the public facing SMTD website (new site live July 2022) The teaching audit has been shared to the SMTD Executive Committee and implemented by HR.