Our multifaceted society calls for engineers that are not only experts in their domain, but possess the flexibility to understand adjacent disciplines. The inclusion of the performing arts in engineering curricula has shown potential for cultivating creativity and equipping STEM students with problem-solving abilities. However, the literature…

Storytelling is an important skill in management education for leaders. However, even though students learn about storytelling, they do not often practice it. When students do practice storytelling, they frequently prepare speeches that they deliver in front of a class. Interacting with theater students can help management students convey a…

The purpose of this study was to evaluate a summer performing arts (SPA) program using elements of a servant leadership model to assess potential impacts of a SPA program on leadership skills development. High school students enrolled in a SPA program were given both a pre- and post-survey that included leadership questions. There was a growth in…

Recent experiences in rehearsals have led us to question how student dancers perceive the culture of rehearsal. We are interested in how the influence of shows like "So You Think You Can Dance" affects student expectations. How do students from competitive dance studio backgrounds approach learning in a rehearsal setting? Are there…

Virtual environments have the potential to be an important teaching tool for emotionally sensitive issues capable of producing a sense of presence, perspective-taking and introspection in users in a risk-free, rapid feedback experience. In designing such experiences, it is essential that users are regularly engaged in a collaborative design…

Teaching artists know that many of the children they teach are being deprived of essential human experiences. Poverty, violence, and ineffective education have left them with little hope of emotional or material success, and a student's connection to an artist can change his or her life in little and big ways. Paula Davidoff and Carolyn Hunt are…

We use an experimental course collaboration that occurred in the winter of 2012 as a case study for an approach to interdisciplinary collaboration between Theatre and Humanities courses, and we argue that the theatre methodology of "devising" can serve as a particularly rich locus for collaboration between Theatre students and other…

Since 2002, a multidisciplinary program has been used to encourage science students to build on their chemical knowledge and to appreciate how it applies to the world around them. The program is interactive and instills a new set of core learning skills that are often underrepresented in undergraduate curricula, namely, cooperative learning,…

The study explores students' and lecturers' experiences of group work assessment in a performing arts department that includes undergraduate studies in theatre, dance and film. Working from the perspective that assessment is a socially situated practice informed by, and mediated through, the socio-political context within which it occurs, this…

This document presents the proceedings of the 17th Annual Research Forum held June 29, 2012, at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Included herein are the following 25 action research papers: (1) "Reading and Writing": A Study Comparing the Strengths of Peer Review and Visible Author Writing Strategies (Elizabeth Behar); (2)…

A study explored how ethnically diverse students in an urban high school worked collaboratively to conceive and execute original theater pieces that addressed issues of relevance to them. Subjects, 29 of the original 51 seniors in the theater institute program at Hillcrest High School, New York City, completed pre- and posttests, written…

This paper is the result of a research project that set out to document a group of adolescent musicians in a rural Australian secondary school as they wrote and performed their own music. The processes they developed are reflective of a cooperative approach to group composition where upwards of 21 students composed and "jammed" their way…