W&L Awarded Associated Colleges of the South (ACS) Collaborative Curricula Themed Grant The grant will help fund a project to bring professors from the six ACS dance departments to participating campuses and create a model for shared teaching.

By Erica Turman
July 10, 2019

Jenefer Davies, associate professor of dance/theater at Washington and Lee, and heads of dance programs from University of Richmond, Sewanee, Spelman College, Davidson College and Rollins College, were awarded an Associated Colleges of the South (ACS) Collaborative Curricula themed grant for $20,000. Washington and Lee is recognized as the lead institution for the grant.

The grant will help fund a project to bring professors from the six ACS dance departments to participating campuses and create a model for shared teaching. Each professor will engage with new students and expose them to fresh, specialty-specific pedagogy through master classes, lectures and workshops.

“Through this grant, I’d like to target traditionally underrepresented populations, as well as undervalued topics, and offer students greater depth in dance studies,” said Davies. “To this end, I invited all of my dance colleagues that are members of the Associated Colleges of the South to join me in sharing our resources. This will enable us to collaborate and cross-pollinate our departments by bringing one another to each of our campuses to teach from our individual areas of specialty and diversify our curricula.”

Through the grant, Davies says she hopes “students will, in effect, come to understand and experience the richness of a pan-cultural dance program with a diversity of styles and forms.”

She added, “We hope that the relationships formed through this project will flourish and lead to collaboration on a larger scale, where students might visit one another’s campuses to share work, delve into critical analysis or make new dance works together.”