At the University of Northern Colorado’s (UNC) College of Performing and Visual Arts (PVA), students gain the professional skills needed to build thriving careers, with guidance from experienced faculty like Christine Kiernan Fisher, who has spent much of her career moving between two worlds.
She first pursued an MFA in Dance Performance and Choreography from UNC Greensboro in 2005. Her work took her to the John Gamble Dance Theatre and Van Dyke Dance Group, but somewhere along the way, the classroom became just as important. Fisher then returned to UNC Greensboro for a PhD in Teacher Education. Her work has since earned her national recognition, including being named the 2020 National Dance Education Teacher of the Year and receiving the National Dance Education Organisation’s 2022 Presidential Award.
Today, those different parts of her career continue to inform her work as MA Programme Co-Coordinator and Adjunct Faculty in Dance.
“UNC drew me because the programme is serious about dance education as a field of study in all contexts — public school community, community, studios, and post-secondary,” she explains. “The low-residency structure allows me to join the faculty while remaining rooted in my own professional community in North Carolina — the same flexibility our students can benefit from.”
Thesis exhibition for Art and Design MA students. Source: University of Northern Colorado
Five paths to master your craft
Fisher teaches the Dance Education MA, where licensed teachers and aspiring dance educators improve their teaching by learning about choreography, dance forms and styles, curriculum development and advocacy, dance performance production, and more. The Art and Design MA helps practising artists develop their craft, while the Music MM stands out for its concentrations in Conducting (Choral or Instrumental) and Music Education, all intended for working musicians. Then there’s the Theatre Education MA, which combines production, advanced drama instruction, innovation and curriculum, advocacy, and research.
You won’t need to uproot your life for your studies either. “The low-residency model of our programmes (which are gaining popularity across disciplines) recognises that our students are already doing the work and it is unreasonable in these economic times to expect them to sacrifice teaching positions to further their education,” says Fisher.
That is why you can work and study from wherever you are during the academic year, then head to UNC’s campus for a short, intensive summer session. It’s convenient and affordable, and Fisher believes the experience “reinvigorates and deepens their (students’) ability to be reflexive practitioners.”
“They have also shared that the in-person somatic and movement work has helped them grow exponentially in their ability to situate their own teaching practices in a way that is more embodied.”
Cohort of Theatre Education MA students. Source: University of Northern Colorado
Keep doing what you love
Expert guidance is another constant throughout all programmes. “The bonding that happens in person over the summer sets the stage for students to build relationships with each other and the faculty,” Fisher shares.
And reaching out is encouraged. Fisher has invited students to set up a Zoom call with her at the start of the semester simply so they can get to know one another beyond the coursework. “As I have gotten to know the students, I think their sense of community is closer than people would expect from a mostly online programme,” she says.
That close faculty-student relationship matters because no two students arrive with the same goals. Some work with arts integration, some teach adult learners, and others work in college settings or K-12 schools. The coursework is designed with that variety in mind, “so that students are building projects (and knowledge) in a way that can be applied both immediately and long term in the classes they already teach — while also planning for a change in class context if that is their goal,” says Fisher.
For Art and Design MA student Jamie Hatch, being able to build on the career she already had was exactly what made going back to university possible. And now that she’s taken that step, her advice to others is simple: “Just go for it. When you make an investment in your education and your pursuits as an artist, you gain so much from the hard work you put into it.”
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