DPA - Arts Management Faculty

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Sherburne Laughlin
Program Director, Assistant Professor
PHONE: 202.885.3485 E-MAIL: slaughlin@american.edu
OFFICE: Katzen 215

Sherburne Laughlin holds an MBA from Yale University and is a cum laude graduate of Davidson College. Her nonprofit management career spans over 20 years of executive director and program director experience. As a professor for 11 years at American University, she has pioneered top-ranked courses in strategic planning and served as Manager-in-Residence. Her consulting work focuses on issues of governance, organizational development and strategic planning and serves all types of nonprofits, arts and non-arts, large and small, national and local. She has served on many arts panels, including the Montgomery County Arts Council panel and the national VSA arts panel. Ms. Laughlin is a member of the Advisory Board of Round House Theater and sits on the Board of Trustees and Executive Committee of Davidson College.

Michael Wilkerson
Assistant Professor
PHONE: 202.885.3438 E-MAIL: wilkerso@american.edu
OFFICE: Katzen 219

Michael Wilkerson has worked as a university administrator, freelance writer, director of two multidisciplinary artists’ residency programs, founding chair of a national service/advocacy organization, and as founding editor of a national literary magazine. He has taught writing, arts management, literary interpretation and other subjects for more than two decades, at Indiana, DePauw, Wisconsin and at the School of the Art Institute. Michael has served as a grants panelist for the NEA and many other organizations and specializes in cultural policy and artists' support systems. He is married to writer Deborah Galyan and is the father of two sons, Dylan and Liam.

Gail Humphries Mardirosian
Associate Professor, Department Chair
PHONE: 202.885.3429 E-MAIL: ghumphr@american.edu

Dr. Gail Humphries Mardirosian is the Chair of the Department of Performing Arts at the American University, where she is now in her 25th year as a professor of theatre. While at American, Gail received Awards for Outstanding Service to the University community, the Outstanding Teaching Award for the College of Arts and Sciences, and the Outstanding Teaching Award from Alpha Chi Omega. She will be implementing a Fulbright Scholar Award for the 08-09 academic year, teaching at the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague, Czech Republic. To date, she has directed a total of 106 productions, including musicals, serious dramas, the classics and children's theatre, in varied venues throughout the United States. She is particularly interested in cross-disciplinary instruction K-16. She founded Imagination Quest (IQ) over 10 years ago as an arts-integration curriculum, teacher training and research project.

She is also interested in international theatre. She has presented papers and productions in various countries. In the spring semester 2007, she directed American University students in a new English translation of Three Sisters performed at the Embassy of the Czech Republic and is presenting a paper on this production in fall, 08 at the Catholic University in Ruzomberok, Slovokia. Last fall Gail directed American University students in They Shoot Horses, Don't They?, performed at the 7th International Festival of the Volkov Theatre in Yaroslavl, Russia. During summer 2006, she presented a paper entitled "Another American Voicing of the Theatre of Josef Topol" at the University of the South, in Ceske Budejovice, Czech Republic. In summer 2005, she participated in an international symposium in Delphi, Greece where she presented a paper entitled "Parallel Power: Periklean Athens and Antigone from Page to Stage at American University." Gail has developed and presented nearly 100 master classes and workshops all over the United States including recent presentations at the Florida Association of Theatre Educator's conference (In Search of Shakespeare), the New England Theatre Conference (Teach to Reach: Arts Based Teaching and Learning), and at Brown University's No Teacher Left Behind Conference (Learning to Read, Reading to Learn). Gail is also an arts education consultant and has served numerous non-profit performing arts organizations in that capacity.

Gail's publications include: "Transforming the Classroom Teacher Into a Teaching Artist" in the summer 2007 issue of Teaching Artist Journal, an e-journal article entitled "The Quest to Captivate Hearts and Minds in the Classroom: Teaching to Reach and Foster Creativity and Giftedness in Children" at www.TheatroEdu.gr, "The Theatre of Psychology, the Psychology of Theatre" in the Journal of Teaching Psychology, "An American Voicing of the Silenced Theatre of Josef Topol" for the Czechoslovak Society of Arts and Sciences, and an article for the International Journal of Learning entitled "Literacy Learning for At-Risk Students Through Arts-Based Instruction" focusing on a case study of the Imagination Quest project. She has just started work on a book entitled A PEDAGOGY FOR THE CRITICAL IMAGINATION: THE ARTS AS A PATHWAY TO SUCCESS IN LEARNING K-16.

Janelle Ott Long
Adjunct Professor

Janelle Ott Long is the dance specialist at the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) and is entering her 10 th year there. Prior to joining the NEA, she was employed at Dance/USA, the national service organization for professional dance. While at Dance/USA, she helped with the administration of two re-granting programs: American Dance Touring Initiative and Philadelphia Repertory Development Initiative, acted as the liaison to the board of trustees, and administered Dance/USA’s grants. Other arts organizations she has worked at include Cleveland Ballet, The Washington Ballet, and Karamu House. She is a graduate of Baldwin-Wallace College where she majored in business and minored in dance. She received her M.A. in arts management at American University, where she currently is an adjunct faculty member.

Yvonne Lewis
Adjunct Professor

Yvonne Pelletier Lewis is an independent consultant. She holds an MS in University and Business Administration from Oregon State University (OSU) and a BA in French from UCLA. Her past positions, including Vice President for Special Programs at NOVA Research Company (Bethesda, MD) and Assistant Dean of Students at OSU, have involved management of government, health care, women’s issues, and educational projects. She has experience in program development and oversight; and in development of presentations, publications, educational materials, technical reports, and proposals (to Federal, State, and local governments, corporations, and foundations). Ms. Lewis has also been a member of several proposal review panels for the National Institute on Drug Abuse. She is co-author of The Handbook for Conducting Drug Abuse Research With Hispanic Populations (2001, Greenwood Press); editor of Dreams to Sign (2002, Imagination Stage, Inc.); and co-author of The Quest to Reach Potential Through the Arts: An Instructional Guide (2007, Imagination Stage, Inc.).

Jack Rasmussen

Jack Rasmussen has been the Director and Curator of the American University Museum at the Katzen Arts Center since 2004.

1994 Ph.D. Anthropological Linguistics, American University, Washington, D. C.
1991 M.A. Anthropology, American University, Washington, D. C.
1983 M.A. Arts Management, American University, Washington, D. C.
1975 M.F.A. Painting, American University, Washington, D. C.
1972 B.A. Art, Whitman College, Walla Walla, Washington.

Department of Performing Arts, College of Arts and Sciences, American University
4400 Massachusetts Ave., NW, Washington, DC 20016-8053 [phone] 202-885-3420 [fax] 202-885-1092

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