Create Program to Award Dance Teaching Credentials

The Dance Department is currently working with the Education Department to build the teaching credentials in dance. As of now, the State of California is on the verge of voting to approve the credentials and we would like to be ready to offer the program at Mills. We would be the first College in Northern California to offer this program and it has the potential to bring a lot of new students to the College.

Besides collaborating with the Education Department, the Dance Department is also partnering with Luna Institute, who has been deeply engaged in building the credentials. The Dance Department has been hiring the director of Luna Institute, Patricia Reedy for years; she offers a teaching seminar to Mills dance graduate students. Ms. Reedy is a graduate of Mills and she is invested in the idea of bringing the credential program to Mills.

This is a new market and we believe there is a high demand, since no one can teach in a public school without those credentials. We would like to begin offering the teaching credentials to the graduate students (adding one more year to our MA or MFA program) and eventually create a "4 + 1" for the undergraduate community. To fulfill the requirements for the credentials, we would plan to have summer courses. The Education Department is currently working with the Dance Department to build the program.

See Also

Theatre & Dance Credentialing: The Time is Now
No Dancer Left Behind: chasing the dance credential

Outreach Programs to Boost Reputation and Enrollment

Colleges are often represented through their athletic department. However another way to represent the College is through a solid "outreach program" in the arts, sciences and humanities. This type of program targets high schools and/or other colleges as a tool for recruitment.

Examples

An outreach can take many forms and it can be organized departmentally or through a division. For example, the Dance Department went to Berkeley High, the Crowden School, Santa Rosa University and Hayward College and presented a "lecture demonstration," which is basically a mini concert with a presentation done by one Faculty member. It can include a discussion about artistic processes, a period of questions and answers, presentation of the curriculum and sometimes have activities that will involve students’ participation.

Science departments could develop a small repertoire of "road shows" that would be of interest to high schools in the Bay Area (or beyond). Social science departments, likewise, could offer talks and demonstrations. In both cases, some research would be necessary to determine just what topics and genres would work for different audiences and would play on the strengths of our faculty and students.

The Leverage

The Admission office also goes to various conferences and presentations and makes school visits, but sending faculty and students directly to schools and showing the actual work we do in person with some of our students can establish strong connections and enrich the visited school even as it benefits us visibility. Even if the students in these various schools do not end up applying to Mills, they might attend an event on campus, talk about Mills with parents or friends or simply take with them a positive Mills experience.

To make these “outreach programs” truly beneficial for the College, they would probably need to be organized in an "officially" with a vision behind them.  For example, they might be grouped by theme or by division. They would also need to be coordinated with the Admission Office; if the event takes place in high schools, someone from the undergraduate program should participate. If it’s another college, someone from the graduate admission should accompany the group etc.

What It Would Take

Transportation should also be considered as a part of the infrastructure necessary to make something like this work.  The PE department is able to go "on the road" because it does have its own vans.  A program like this would probably need to have a similar resource on hand to make it work.  And we would have to figure out how to fit this into our already busy schedules; no small thing, but do-able.

Having someone with vision and some modest resources in charge of such an “outreach program” could produce something that is a great recruitment tool as well as helping to spread the education and culture that Mills has to offer.

See Also: "Capitalize on Public Performance/Lecture Spaces"

Examples at Other Schools

"Fruitville Elementary Joins New College Archaeology Day"
Faculty and students host a Saturday event to introduce K12 students to "public archaeology" on the New College of Florida campus.

Host various Festivals and/or Summer Residencies

Mills, being located in the Bay Area, is a great magnet for residencies and/or festivals; the College’s image could truly benefit by sharing the expertise of various artists and scholars with the Oakland and Bay Area community. It is vital to open our doors to local, national and international artists in order to stay in touch with what is currently going on in the Arts. Mills College has already a strong history for its experimental work in the Arts but by 2027, it could have the reputation to be the “hot bed” for what is going on in the Arts!

The Dance department used to bring summer residencies such as Martha Graham, Paul Taylor and Limon Dance Company. However without the infrastructure, it became too difficult to produce such events. The College would benefit from having a person in charge of organizing such residencies as well as festivals, and find a way to integrate them into the curriculum of each department. For example, if students registered for a summer intensive/residence, they could receive course credits, which would lighten their schedule during the year. We could set up applications to support under privileged participants and offer full or partial scholarships, work-study grants etc.

One festival that we have already been approached to organize, is the prestigious American Dance Festival (ACDF); ACDF is the most popular and well-attended College dance festival in the country. It is a great marketing tool since it attracts a lot of high schools and undergraduate students. As of now Mills doesn't have enough facilities but, with a person in charge, we could easily partner with UC Berkeley or Holy Names College.

Examples

Proposal to Create a Minor in Theater

NOTE: Full formal proposal visible at bottom of post. 

Overview 

 The Dance Department is proposing to create a much-needed minor in Theater Studies to fill the deep need for dramatic arts on campus. Mills has a strong Fine Arts Division but one that is incomplete without a theater component, which it had until 2004.

We developed this proposal in order to:

1. Fully represent the true scope of Performing Arts on campus by returning Drama to the Mills curriculum. 
2. Broaden the options for Mills undergraduate students to experience the arts and provide a wider range of elective courses from which to choose. 
3. Fill a void that has been felt by current and past community members at Mills since the extinction of the Drama Department in 2004 (see Fall 2012 Mills Quarterly p. 2: “Ask Alecia: Will you please reinstate the theater arts department?”). 
4.  Deepen and expand the undergraduate MA, and MFA programs in performance by adding theater to the curriculum, which is vital for any liberally educated person to experience and understand. 
5.  Increase our interdisciplinary collaborations with departments in the other Fine Arts but also potentially in English, Education, and Anthropology. 

Our plan is to invite a full time Artist in Residence to begin teaching the theater courses in 2013-2014. Rationale Adding a theater minor is the logical next step for our department and for the College. When we offered the College 60 course “From the Page to the Stage” in 2008, non-dance majors flocked to the class because it involved transforming stories to staged dance and theater productions. These students expressed a great longing for drama, and we realized that many more students shared their yearning for dramatic arts which was not being adequately met. At the same time, we came to realize that our dance students have to be able to create dance that involves theatrical approaches to movement arts. Because we lack the capacity to dedicate courses to the study of theater, however, dance students have no means of getting a full understanding of what theater in dance entails.

We became pro-active last year when we added drama courses to our curriculum. All of our efforts to bring theater into our curriculum over the last several years have brought positive results for students from various departments but without appropriate faculty resources, we are not equipped to take Theater where it needs to go and build on our momentum. We lack the necessary faculty in Dance currently and the infrastructure to develop Theater as it needs to be. Thus, we are seeking to create a theater minor to meet these demands. This move would allow us to take theater courses out of DNC 180 Special Topics and provide stability, continuity, and needed growth in the Performing Arts curriculum.

The new minor in Theater Studies would also benefit the College by:

• Attracting prospective students and retaining those who now leave because of the College’s lack of a theater program; 
• Providing a wider choice of elective courses to Mills students; 
• with the future change of credits into semester hours, our students will appreciate the number of elective courses in dance and theater offered for 1, 2, 3, and 4 semester hours; 
• Fostering critical thinking skills in our students; Enhancing reading/writing skills; 
• Promoting a new vocabulary for artistic collaboration; Helping our students gain self-confidence through dramatic reading; 
• Helping our students become better speakers; 
• Creating a community that will share the love of theater; 
• Giving the students more opportunities to perform; 
• Making the College even more vibrant by offering theater performances; 
• Gaining the support of our Alumni who have been asking to reinstate drama at Mills. 

The Market

Most colleges and universities have a Theater program often attached to their dance department, for example: Saint-Mary’s College, UC Berkeley, Santa Clara University College of Arts and Sciences, San Francisco State University, California State University, Smith College, etc… What makes our program unique is the fact that students, through their choice of electives, can design their minor with an emphasis on drama or physical theater. As you all know, Mills College used to offer a major in drama and had a Theater department until 2004. From 1996 to 2003, drama the average number of undergraduate students majoring in drama was 10.

Program 

We propose that Dance Department becomes the Dance and Theater Studies Department without changing the registration identification for our dance courses. Only the theater courses would become THS in order to keep the clarity of the tracks for the students as well as making it easier for the Registrar.

As previously mentioned, the minor in Theater Studies would have a total of 6 Mills credits, with some requirements being offered every year and some every other year. The minor will draw heavily from the Dance curriculum, which has a list of courses pertinent to the minor: Acting Fundamentals, Improvisation, Dance Production (which is being retitled Stage Production), Jazz, Laban Movement Analysis, and Costume Design. In turn, most of the Theater courses will fulfill requirements or electives for our undergraduate Dance majors. We not only have collaboration designed into these courses but we plan to extend it into the performance classes (having some of the Dance Faculty choreographing, which would directly feed an emphasis on “physical theater”).

Impact on the Graduate Programs 

In the Fine Arts, there is a strong connection between the undergraduate and graduate programs. Both communities will often work together in the same classroom and the success of one program will directly influence the success of the other. Adding theater courses will set up the stage for even more collaborations within the Fine Arts.

Our Theater Studies minor would also support the graduate community by offering selected courses with graduate credits. These courses would not replace or cover requirements but could be counted as electives. For example the interdisciplinary course, Documentary Theater/Playwriting, would attract graduate students from across campus: creative writing, music, journalism, art, dance etc. The course is ethnographic in nature, based on gathering data from the community on an issue that is currently in the news, then transforming those stories by stages until, in the second semester, they present a play based on the work. This course reflects the College mission of social justice and interdisciplinary collaboration.

Another course that we are offering for the graduates is “Directing”. It is a course that builds leadership and, speaking for our dance graduates, it would directly benefit them by building an understanding of space in myriads way and learning to shape it with care, which would enhance their thesis concert work, the capstone of the program.

Financial Impact

The theater minor will build on the existing resources of the dance department to offer an additional educational option for students and increase collaboration among the departments in the Fine Arts. During its last seven years, Mills previous major in drama averaged 10 students per year. We believe that in its first year, the new Theater Studies minor would attract at least as many students with the goal of having approximately 15 to 20 students by the third year, and each year after. We base this number from:

1. The enrollment from our “Acting Fundamentals” course. 
2. From a short survey we conducted during this year’s “Reg Fest”: 99% of undergraduate students who answered were interested in taking courses in Theater and 70% were interested in a minor.

In terms of financial impact, the drama minor and renewed theater activity on campus will contribute to attracting and retaining students. If the drama minor contributes to retaining 5 students who might otherwise leave to pursue this interest somewhere else (which we know happened this year), then the minor will be bringing in almost $100,000 per year. This figure is based on $19,600 net tuition revenue that the College receives per student.

After a five years’ period, looking at the pro and con, the Dance and Theater Studies department is hoping to develop a major as well. To be able to do so, we would need better facilities since Lisser Theater is not adequate, even for the current dance program.

The Fine Arts Division has written a report in 2011-12 and mentioned the necessity for a new building with a black box theater, in order to create a multi purpose space. By 2027, this new building could be the home of the Dance and Theater Department Studies as well as accommodate, Intermedia arts, Music and Arts.

Capitalize on Public Performance/Lecture Spaces

Over the past few years, venues such as bars and cafes position themselves in the market by offering artists, authors, and now, scientists and researchers, opportunities to present their work or to just lecture on a particular topic.  How about a concerted effort to take advantage of such venues with a coordinated set of Mills offerings by faculty, staff, and/or students?  What would be needed is to build an infrastructure that would act as a sort of agency for linking the Mills side (presenters) with the community side (the venues and programs).   

We already have a preliminary efforts at things like encouraging faculty to do media interviews or write op-eds; this could be seen as an expansion of those efforts and a variation on performance outreach mentioned in another post.

Some examples:

Nerd Nite SF:  http://sf.nerdnite.com  

Nerd Nite East Bay https://www.facebook.com/groups/370443193014244/?ref=ts&fref=ts

Tenderloin Reading Series https://www.facebook.com/pages/Tenderloin-Reading-Series/175566989177413

Faculty Driven Trans-Disciplinary Major Pilots

Idea

What if small groups of faculty design, and get approval for "college" majors to be offered for a few years on a pilot basis.  The menu on offer would vary from year to year as lessons were learned and interests evolved.  For something similar, see the programs at Evergreen College.

Introduction 

Like many liberal arts colleges, Mills allows students to “design their own majors.” These institutions also, from time to time, consider curriculum changes including the creation of new majors and (much less frequently) the elimination of existing majors. When the two processes are contrasted, interesting differences emerge. The former leaves the inventiveness in the hands of sophomores, the latter in the hands of distracted committees, status quo bias, and turf battles. The products of the former, even if an excellent idea, are rarely repeated. The latter, even if a bad idea, are rarely repealed. The list of contrasts could go on, but the bottom line does not require it: our processes for curricular innovation leave a lot to be desired.

The future of women’s education depends on changing this. The pace of change in world of higher education is such that offering an education that is just as good as and just the same as except for women only is not likely a sustainable. If we continue to be guided by our 19th and 20th century educational legacy, we stand to produce graduates less and less well prepared for 21st century lives. This will reduce the attractiveness to new students and reduce the success of graduates and, in turn, reduce the level at which they can support the college.

Women’s colleges like Mills, if they are to serve women who will lead change in the coming decades must themselves be able to lead change in what it means to be an institution of higher education. One piece of this is to re-think what it means to “major” in something.

Majoring in the 21st Century 

What should students at women's colleges major in? For a long time we have tried to change women’s position in the social division of labor by getting more women to major in subjects that had tended to be dominated by men. In some fields, like medicine, this project has been quite successful (The Lancet 2009); in others, like computer science, quite disappointing (Stross 2008).

These efforts, while laudable, are, ironically, not very future oriented. The academic paths we encourage our students to follow in pursuit of breaking barriers and ceilings are on maps designed to solve the problems of a previous century. The time has come to think about training leaders not in terms of the legacy of disciplinary boundaries and social problems of the 20th century, but rather for the problems and opportunities that lie ahead.

In other words, what they should major in in the 21st century is the 21st century.

What would this mean? Even without crystal balls, we can guess that the leaders of tomorrow, in technology, arts, and politics, are going to be boundary spanners, most likely not the "interdisciplinarians" that we have talked ineffectively about for the last few decades, but rather "transdisciplinarians" whose tool kits ignore boundaries and who possess the ability to collaborate with colleagues with alien skill sets.

It won't do to reprise previous efforts at top down, monolithic, a priori curriculum reform. We need to eschew the old approach of appointing committees and voting up or down wishy-washy consensus plans based on what we wish we had studied in college. In its place we need an infrastructure that will facilitate faculty experimentation and curricular reconfiguration in ways that do not depend on university committees, decanal decrees or foundation grants. In effect, we need to import some of the virtues of “startup culture” into the academy.

We should explore how women's colleges can reinvent themselves not to prepare women for traditionally male occupations but for a world that is not yet here and to do this in ways that other institutions will want to emulate. It will focus on ways to build an innovation infrastructure that encourages, facilitates and rewards faculty for engaging actively in this process.

A Preliminary Vision 

What if small groups of faculty design, and get approval for "college" majors in consideration of

1. existing intellectual and pedagogical resources, 
2. an analysis of future problems and challenges in American and world society, 
3. an assessment of the opportunity structure in the graduate school and employment markets (to optimally match “novel” majors with career paths likely to be open to them). 

Faculty would commit to a given sequence of courses and advising students for a set number of years. Faculty would then be in the position of “selling” the program to entering students; if there were no student interest, there’d be no program. Similarly, faculty and students would evaluate such programs on an ongoing basis, making changes or even eliminating the programs as indicated. Programs that are particularly successful could be institutionalized in majors “on the books” if desired.

We expect that novel programs like this will prove attractive to excellent students and to outside funders currently desperate to find student oriented new ideas. The institutionalization, not of particular "majors," but of this process, can lead to a general institutional nimbleness that is rarely seen in organizations like liberal arts colleges.

Opportunity

Amid the litany of problems facing women’s liberal arts colleges like Mills lies opportunity. Contrary to the position some have taken, the project of educating women can be called a success without saying that it is over. According to the National Center for Education Statistics women will continue to earn about 60% of the bachelor's degrees awarded in the U.S. each year – over one million per year – during the next decade (National Center for Education Statistics 2010). This is not a small market. But to enroll these students women's colleges need to take the lead transitioning from "just as good as but different" to “different and better.”

Colleges like Mills tend to be small, under-resourced, and have relatively low rates of staff turnover, all factors that make innovation challenging. These same factors can make it possible to create an environment in which small experiments can flourish. We should attempt to take advantage of these characteristics and this demographic trend to expand our impact on society.

Works Cited 

1. National Center for Education Statistics. 2010. “Degrees Conferred by Degree-granting Institutions, by Level of Degree and Sex of Student: Selected Years, 1869-70 Through 2019-20.” http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d10/tables/dt10_279.asp. 
2. ———. “Digest of Education Statistics, 2007.” 
3. Institute of Education Sciences. http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d07/tables/dt07_258.asp. 
4. Ryan, Dan. 2012. “Majoring in the 21st Century.” http://majoring21.blogspot.com/. 
5. Stross, Randall. 2008. “What Has Driven Women Out of Computer Science?” The New York Times, November 16, sec. Business. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/16/business/16digi.html. 
6. The Lancet. 2009. “Women in Medicine—a Future Assured.” The Lancet 373 (9680) (June): 1997. doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(09)61088-6..