Announcements

TDPS

Congratulations to Professor Karen Bradley and TDPS students Christina Banalopoulou (Ph.D. student), Drew Barker (M.A. Theatre '13), and Kate Spanos (Ph.D. candidate), along with Sargoon Nepaul (dance and neuroscience undergraduate major) and Emma Sessions (kinesiology undergraduate major) on being awarded a Future of Information Alliance (FIA) - Deutsch seed grant for their project entitled "Re-imaging and Re-imagining Choreometrics."

Their interdisciplinary project is a collaboration between TDPS, Kinesiology, Neuroscience, and Library Sciences that will create a data set of dance videos from cultures and communities all over the world that were collected by ethnomusicologist Alan Lomax. These clips are now buried in the Library of Congress, and the team will partner with the Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage and the Association for Cultural Equity in New York to access the films. Their goal is to digitize the video and then make it widely available to scholars and communities around the world through an online collaborative Wiki.

The team was awarded $25,000 to complete the first three months of groundwork for the project, which will feed into and enable them to meet their long-term goals. The project meets the priorities that are valued by the FIA-Deutsch program, including information equity, information literacy, culture, collaboration, information transfer and emergence.

The University of Maryland College of Arts and Humanities (ARHU) would like to congratulate the inaugural recipients of the Foxworth Creative Enterprise Initiative (Foxworth Initiative), including Psyche Williams-Forson, associate professor in the Department of American Studies; Ana Patricia Rodriguez, associate professor in the School of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures; and Leigh Wilson Smiley, associate professor of theatre and director of the School of Theatre, Dance, and Performance Studies.

“We are excited and proud to announce our first cohort of Foxworth Creative Enterprise Initiative recipients and courses,” said Bonnie Thornton Dill, dean for the College of Arts and Humanities. "Funding from the Foxworths will enable faculty to further engage students in the lived experiences of people from diverse heritages, traditions and histories, and facilitate their reflections upon the role of the humanities in promoting civic values within the contemporary United States.”

This year’s Foxworth Initiative funds the development of three arts and humanities courses to support advanced teaching and engaged research by scholars whose interests examine community defined issues and whose products and documentation appropriately assess student learning and community engagement.

Courses include a variety of topics like Food, Trauma, and Sustainability; Latina/o Transmigration and Transnationalism; and Community Partnership for the Performing Arts. The Foxworth Initiative also partners each course or “Creative Enterprise Team” with community partners like Prince George’s County Food Equity Council and Casa De Maryland to encourage the inclusion of the arts and humanities disciplines in the application of solutions to pressing issues like food insecurity, climate change, immigration, poverty and racism.

This initiative is made possible by the generosity of two college alumni, Domonique and Ashley Foxworth; Domonique ’04 is a graduate of American Studies, and Ashley ’06 is a proud English alumna. Ultimately the Foxworth Initiative is intended to enrich arts and humanities education and scholarship, and support projects that address enduring or emerging themes central to the arts and humanities or questions arising from other disciplines to which the arts and humanities might speak. For more information, visit www.arhu.umd.edu/foxworth.

INAGURAL FOXWORTH FACULTY COHORT:
 

Faculty Lead: Psyche Williams-Forson, Department of American Studies

Course: AMST 418G: Food, Trauma, and Sustainability

Social Issue: Food insecurity

Approach: Students will work with community partners like the Prince George’s County Food Equity Council to help reduce food vulnerabilities in the county.

Interdisciplinary in focus, students will draw from the fields of American Studies, anthropology, cultural studies and women’s studies to explore issues of food insecurity and urban food deserts. The project will engage these issues in the context of Prince George’s County (e.g. Sheridan Community Garden, Prince George’s County Food Equity Council), and in addition to their hands-on engagement students will learn about issues of food economies, acquisition and distribution circuits.

Community benefit: Communities made up of elderly and migrant populations, identified by partnering organizations like Casa De Maryland, will benefit from food delivery, work in community gardens and will be able to share their life stories with students.

Faculty Lead: Ana Patricia Rodriguez, Department of Spanish and Portuguese 

Course: SPAN 408i: Latina/o Transmigration and Transnationalism

Social Issue: Invisibility of Salvadorian migrant communities

Approach: The Salvadorian diaspora makes up the third largest Latino migrant community in the United States, many of whom reside in the Washington, D.C. metro area. SPAN 408i will bring students into conversation with this community to build and archive a digital storytelling project.  The course will explore the complex migration factors that lead to the Salvadorian diaspora.  Students will interact with non-English speakers to understand Latin American migration patterns with the members of the community, drawing on the powerful narrative tradition of testimonio, will have an opportunity to challenge their social and political invisibility through these documentation practices. At the end of the course, students and community members will present aspects of this digital storytelling project at the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C.

Community benefit: UMD students in SPAN 408i will work with alongside the Latino Resource and Justice Center (CARECEN) in their community outreach to members of the Salvadorian diaspora. Together they will build a digital archive of Salvadorian migration, experiences of civil war and unrest, to form part of a larger archive in San Francisco, Washington, D.C. and El Salvador.

Faculty Lead: Leigh Wilson Smiley, School of Theatre, Dance and Performance Studies

Course: TDPS358P Community Partnership for the Performing Arts

Social Issue: Racism, immigration and adolescent identity

Approach: Students from UMD and the Latin American Youth Center will work together to learn and apply performance skills of listening, voice and working in front of an audience. They will apply these techniques as they collaboratively build a performance piece, which they will use to explore and express a range of social issues that affect them as adolescents and young adults.  Inspired by the work of Jerzy Grotowski, Augusto Boal and James Gilligan, among others, they will develop storytelling skills as a means of expression, empowerment and imagination. 

Community benefit: Students explore and develop community partnership skills to become trained cultural field workers who will do transformative community based work. Latin American Youth Center.

by Alana Carchedi, UMD Right Now

COLLEGE PARK, Md. – In the spirit of National Entrepreneurs' Day and Global Entrepreneurship Week, the University of Maryland is celebrating its great successes in innovation and entrepreneurship over the past year.

From incredible student feats and fearless competitors, to game-changing technology advancements and a unique set of collaborative partnerships, UMD has a lot to boast about its ongoing list of accomplishments in innovation and entrepreneurship.

"University of Maryland President Wallace Loh has elevated innovation and entrepreneurship to the highest levels campus-wide," says Dean Chang, UMD's associate vice president for innovation and entrepreneurship. "What better way to acknowledge Global Entrepreneurship Week and National Entrepreneurs' Day than to recap some of UMD's finest student, faculty, and institutional highlights in innovation and entrepreneurship from this past year."

Here is a sampling of what the university has accomplished in innovation and entrepreneurship in only one year:

• UMD doctoral student Shweta Gaonkar was one of 15 exceptional students from across the countryhonored by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation’s Emerging Scholars Program for her significant contributions to research in entrepreneurship.
• The Gamera human-powered helicopter team, comprised of students from the A. James Clark School of Engineering, officially had its Aug. 28, 2012 flight certified as a world record of 65.1 seconds by The Fédération Aéronautique Internationale (FAI), also known as The World Air Sports Federation.
• Valerie Sherry, a UMD Master of Architecture candidate, was one of only 21 students from universities nationwide, and the first-ever UMD student, to be honored with the University Innovation Fellowship by the National Center for Engineering Pathways to Innovation (Epicenter).
• UMD was recognized as the top public school in the U.S. and ranked second overall for tech entrepreneurship, according to the newly released 2013 StartEngine College Index, as reported in the Silicon Valley publication PandoDaily. The Princeton Review ranked UMD No. 15 for its undergraduate entrepreneurship program and No. 16 for its graduate entrepreneurship program, up eight spots from the 2013 rankings.
• A group of UMD students won the inaugural U.S. Major League Hacking (MLH) Championship, beating out Rutgers, long-time hackathon heavyweights MIT, Carnegie Mellon, Columbia, Michigan and Stanford, and more than 100 other schools.
• UMD launched the Academy for Innovation and Entrepreneurship, a signature initiative to infuse the university with a culture of innovation and entrepreneurship across all colleges and curriculum.
• The UMD-led DC Innovation Corps (I-Corps), a National Science Foundation-backed program aimed at translating the region's vibrant research community into successful startups and licensed technologies,kicked off its first two regional cohorts of teams of inventors and entrepreneurs in Washington, D.C., and at the NIH campus in Bethesda, Md.
• UMD's College of Arts and Humanities announced an agreement with former Ravens cornerback and NFL Players Association President Domonique Foxworth '04, and his wife, Ashley Manning Foxworth, to launch Foxworth Creative Enterprise Grants. Their gift of $150,000 will fund a three-year pilot program intended to encourage the inclusion of the arts and humanities in developing solutions to some of society's most pressing issues.
• UMD alum and Under Armour founder Kevin Plank worked with the Robert H. Smith School of Business and Dingman Center for Entrepreneurship to make the annual Cupid's Cup a national competition.

To view a full list of UMD's accomplishments in innovation and entrepreneurship over the past year from the Dingman Center for Entrepreneurship, MTECH, the Center for Social Value Creation, the Center for Philanthropy and Nonprofit Leadership, and other campus partners, click here. To learn more about innovation at the University of Maryland, visit www.innovation.umd.edu.

MESSAGE FROM THE DEAN:

Dear Colleagues:
With great excitement we share with you that by September of 2014, the DeVos Institute of Arts Management will relocate to the University of Maryland, College Park, joining the College of Arts and Humanities’ robust portfolio. The institute will continue its work in collaboration with the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center, one of the nation's leading arts incubators. Joining the ranks of renowned arts partners the School of Music; School of Theatre, Dance, and Performance Studies; the Michelle Smith Performing Arts Library; and the Visiting Artist Program, the institute will continue to provide training to arts administrators and arts management consultation to cultural organizations, governments, and foundations nationally and internationally. There has been considerable interest in the college to  develop programs in arts management, and by adding the expertise of this new partner, we are even better positioned to shape the future of the arts worldwide. Through training, mentoring and scholarship of arts students, leaders and entrepreneurs we will be at the forefront of arts education. Over the next several months we will be discussing the details of this relationship with DeVos as well as with faculty and staff in the center and the college.  Please stay tuned for more details. In the meantime, you can learn more about our new partner by visiting the DeVos Institute of Arts Management online: http://www.kennedy-center.org/education/artsmanagement/.

Sincerely,

Bonnie Thornton Dill, Dean, College of Arts and Humanities

Martin Wollesen, Executive Director, Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center 

COLLEGE PARK, Md. –The DeVos Institute of Arts Management at the Kennedy Center, a premier organization for training and supporting arts leadership, is moving to the University of Maryland. Michael M. Kaiser, a foremost expert in arts management, together with the current director Brett Egan, will lead the DeVos Institute of Arts Management at the University of Maryland when the change becomes effective September 1, 2014.

Founded by Kaiser in 2001 after he became president of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, the DeVos Institute trains, supports and empowers arts managers and their boards. It has advised thousands of individuals, organizations, governments and foundations throughout the United States and in over 70 countries on six continents.

"Michael Kaiser and the DeVos Institute are the international gold standard in arts management education and consulting. To have them on our campus is an extraordinary boost to excellence and innovation in the arts at the University of Maryland," says its president Wallace Loh.

The DeVos Institute's offices, staff, and leadership team will relocate from the Kennedy Center to the university campus. At UMD, the institute will continue its important role in the arts community while working with the university on strategic initiatives in the arts.

"The Kennedy Center has been a remarkable home to the DeVos Institute and has allowed Brett Egan and me to build a sizeable education and consulting practice," says Kaiser. "I thank David Rubenstein and the Board of Trustees of the Kennedy Center for their unwavering support and Wallace Loh for his gracious invitation to join the University of Maryland. I look forward to increasing the institute's scope and record of service in our new home."

The DeVos Institute offers a variety of programs that provide practical training at all stages of professional development in the field, including fundraising, artistic planning, strategic planning and board development. Signature offerings include fellowships designed to prepare mid-career arts managers for executive positions and a robust board training program.

"We are very fortunate that one of the world's most well-known and well-respected arts administrators is bringing his 30 years of arts management experience and the DeVos Institute to the University of Maryland," says Mary Ann Rankin, UMD's senior vice president and provost.  "This is an extraordinary opportunity to expand arts programming and management training and to raise the profile of the arts at the University of Maryland to the highest levels."

Kaiser's extensive global leadership experience in arts management includes serving successfully as chief executive of the Royal Opera House in London, the American Ballet Theatre, and the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater before taking his position at the Kennedy Center. Besides founding and leading the institute, Kaiser played a key role in expanding its educational and artistic programming and oversaw major renovations to the Kennedy Center.

"Michael established the arts management training program when he arrived at the Kennedy Center in 2001 and he has nurtured it into a world-class institute," says Kennedy Center Chairman David M. Rubenstein. "We wish Michael the greatest of success as he guides his life's work to its full potential at the University of Maryland where the institute can benefit from the resources of a major educational institution. We look forward to future collaborations between the institute and the Center."

"Training and preparing arts managers to effectively lead artists and arts organizations is a powerful way to leverage creative talents for the benefit and enjoyment of all of us," state Betsy and Dick DeVos. "We're glad the institute's mission will continue to thrive at the University of Maryland as Michael and Brett guide the DeVos Institute to become the world's leading institution devoted to training arts managers."

Additional information about the DeVos Institute is available at www.DeVosInstitute.org.

About the University of Maryland

The University of Maryland is the state's flagship university and one of the nation's preeminent public research universities. A global leader in research, entrepreneurship and innovation, the university is home to more than 37,000 students, 9,000 faculty and staff, and 250 academic programs. Its faculty includes three Nobel laureates, two Pulitzer Prize winners, 49 members of the national academies and scores of Fulbright scholars. The institution has a $1.7 billion operating budget, secures $500 million annually in external research funding and recently completed a $1 billion dollar fundraising campaign.

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by Monette A. Bailey, Terp Magazine

If you don’t think the liberal arts involve hands-on work in the real world, think again. A new fund in the College of Arts and Humanities (ARHU) is encouraging innovative classes that will tackle problems like poverty, racism and gender equality.

A $150,000 gift from NFL Players Association President Domonique Foxworth ’04 and wife Ashley (Manning) ’06, provides seed money for faculty to plan the courses in which students design community outreach programs.

The Foxworth Creative Enterprise Initiative will complement existing efforts to apply arts and humanities skills—reading, writing, critical thinking and communication along with deep knowledge of culture, language and history—to real challenges. Among them are projects helping recent immigrants find their voice through poetry or using ancient Greek literature about war to help veterans discuss and make sense of their experience.

 A committee is reviewing ideas for courses; three will be introduced in Spring 2014.

“The root of many social problems is faulty thinking. The arts and humanities teach you to think both critically and empathetically,” says Michelle Rowley, associate professor of women’s studies and the project’s point person.

As an American studies major, Domonique took a social activism course that stimulated his interest in nonprofit work. After a stellar career on the Terps football team, he played cornerback for the Broncos, Falcons and Ravens, and retired with an injury in 2011. This fall he’s attending Harvard Business School.

Ashley, an English major who later graduated from Harvard Law School, also values a grassroots approach. Their initiative stemmed from conversations the couple had with ARHU Dean Bonnie Thornton Dill on how to nurture students to be more civically engaged citizens.

“We hope that students are going to be interested in helping others long after they leave school,” says Ashley.