UW-Oshkosh
Chair and Professor of Theatre
Wisconsin Teaching Fellow, 2013-14
The Story of a Theatre Professor’s Teaching and Learning Journey
A narrative can be defined as a detailed written account of connected events or as an artform of storytelling often in the format of a biography. In telling my individual story, I do so from the perspective of a being a Tenured Professor of Theatre who has pursued and incorporated the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) into my teaching and into creative scholarly projects. My story of how the Wisconsin Teaching Fellows and Scholars Program (WTFS) has complimented and bolstered my career path and how it is a foundational element of my involvement in SoTL programs is a story of making connections across the state of Wisconsin. It is a story of growing into being an effective educator and scholar in the artistic discipline of Theatre.
A common thread that I have often heard from faculty in the Arts and Humanities is that as trained experts in our fields, we know how to pursue and accomplish professional expectations in our fields, but we often have not been trained in how to translate that advanced education into educating others – especially undergraduate students. Once hired into an academic setting, we need to figure things out as we go and thus, sink or swim! I hold a Masters of Fine Art in Acting – the terminal degree in my area of the discipline. I pursued graduate training to further develop my professional training as an actor – not to become a college professor. Actors in a graduate program are taught how to be effective performers, how to thoroughly research a script and a character, how to effectively collaborate as well as communicate with others, how to use one’s voice and body as one’s instrument and finally, how to make professional contacts for pursuing acting and other Theatre artist jobs.
After graduate school and years of making my living as an actor and theatre artist in both Minneapolis, MN and Milwaukee, WI, I began offering acting workshops in Milwaukee. I started to offer a variety of workshops. Then, I was asked to teach at a local college. During the five years that I lived in Milwaukee, I ended up teaching theatre classes at five local colleges and universities simultaneously. I discovered that I was an effective teacher and that I liked teaching. At this point in my life, it made sense to pursue teaching full time instead of continuing to piece together multiple part time teaching positions. My husband and I then moved to Indiana for my full-time position as an Assistant Professor of Theatre.
We had been in Indiana for 8 years and were looking to move closer to our families in Wisconsin and western Illinois. We thought Wisconsin would provide a higher quality education for our young daughter and provide water resources for the future than where we were located in Indiana. My husband’s type of career is a staple in most cities, so with the unique skills and requirements needed for a job in my discipline, we agreed that I needed to determine my next career move.
When I was hired as a faculty member at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh (UW Oshkosh) in 2008, as part of the University of Wisconsin (UW) System it was a pivotal time in my teaching career. It was a new beginning for me and my family. Being a part of the UW System was a great accomplishment and honor. We were familiar with the strong educational reputation of the UW System and its’ approach to education under the umbrella of the Wisconsin Idea.
As the new Tenure Track faculty member, I needed to immediately pave a path that supported my creative and scholarly research interests and agenda from day one. Finding ways to build pathways that could connect my professional interests to my development as a teacher seemed a natural fit and beneficial to student learning. For years, I wanted to pursue certification in Fitzmaurice Voicework for actors and identified it as my first research focused goal that would also directly impact students. It is an important approach to actor voice training in the theatre. In pursuing this work, I had to apply and be accepted into the certification program.
I first heard about SoTL in a workshop that was offered through the UW Oshkosh Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning (CETL) and I decided it was the “teacher training” I had been seeking. Through CETL, I participated in numerous workshops, applied for summer Professional Development and teaching grants and eventually applied to the university level SoTL mentoring program where as a “mentee” I collaborated with a senior SoTL scholar in a related field on a SoTL research project. The expectation was to apply for a summer teaching grant as an outcome. As a SoTL mentee, I worked on a project that supported my process of becoming certified in Fitzmaurice Voicework. It was a two-year certification process and through SoTL, I was awarded faculty development and teaching grants that helped defer some of the costs of travel and training for the weeks of certification in New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles. Without the SoTL mentor program and the numerous small grants, there was a strong likelihood that I would not have completed this certification. It was an integral component of my Tenure and Promotion outcomes. This certification was immediately relevant to the teaching of my students and added a new layer of training to our acting program.
SoTL offerings on the UW Oshkosh campus provided starter grant opportunities that supported pursuing these types of teaching and professional goals. SoTL information and programs on our campus were supported through CETL where I participated in individual workshops and attended CETL’s annual Provost’s Summit on Teaching and Learning. My involvement in SoTL offerings was a steppingstone to my participation in the UW System’s, Office of Professional and Instructional Development (OPID) educational programs, conferences, and leadership opportunities. The most significant OPID program opportunity for me was my acceptance into the Wisconsin Teaching Fellows and Scholars program (WTFS) as a Teaching Fellow from 2013 through 2014.
When attending the OPID, summer Faculty College seminars over several summers, I learned of the specifics of the WTFS and decided to apply to be a Teaching Fellow to further my “teacher training.” In reflecting on the role that the Wisconsin Teaching Fellows and Scholars program has had on my journey in higher education, it is apparent that being selected as a Teaching Fellow and being involved in SoTL activities and events, helped me to cultivate my individual career storyline as a Theatre educator, as a Theatre professional, and as a leader in higher education. These teacher development programs supplied meaningful foundations for connecting my disciplinary expertise in an artform to the development of my expertise as a teacher of that art form. The WTFS program was beneficial to me in my discipline. The type of work we undertook was useful in giving me confidence as an educator and as a future leader. Although things are different than a few years ago, theatre in general is a discipline where formal research and the expectations around that research are approached in an informal way. Due to my research involving student participants in a class setting, I needed to follow certain Institutional Review Board (IRB) protocols which were new to me. The directors of the WTFS at that time, Cyndi Kernahan and David Voelker, were patient and excellent resources for those of us who were new to IRB and related research requirements. During WTFS, Fellows and Scholars were placed in small groups of faculty from different disciplines from across the UW System with whom we would share our research ideas and outcomes. Having these individuals as resources from other UW campuses was helpful in staying on track with our individual projects, getting perspectives from faculty in other disciplines and meeting the expected deadlines within our year of participation. The opportunity of attending multiple day workshops with this same group of people both during the summer faculty college and then in Madison during the January Symposium workshops allowed us to have time for the research and process aspects of our projects. Making connections and friendships was an enjoyable and unanticipated byproduct of participating in the WTFS program.
As mentioned previously, attending OPID’s Faculty College at UW Richland became my initial teacher training. In doing so, I found that many of the best practices in teaching that were being shared and had terms associated with them were regularly included in theatre courses and in the producing of academic theatre productions. When I learned about high impact practices and bottlenecks to learning, these were not new concepts to me – just new terminology. With this knowledge, I was provided with the communication tools to share how these concepts were a regular occurrence in Theatre.
There are so many examples of how the WTFS program and my participation in SoTL offerings added directly to my teaching. One of the most important concepts I learned during the WTFS was that of “teach to the actual student/person in front of you” and not to students at large. That aspect of personalization added a new layer of teaching effectiveness in how I have communicated with my students. The WTFS, expected us to do peer reviews of other WTFS participants on our campus as an added element to the program. In doing so, my colleague Robert Sipes in Kinesiology and I visited each other’s classes and with the added focus of the WTFS program, the insights were valuable, and to this day we regularly connect at campus events.
Besides the example of my SoTL Mentor Program project discussed above, I also participated in a mini Sustainability Faculty College series of workshops that were sponsored by CETL on the Oshkosh campus. This was the start of incorporating my concern for the planet and the environment within my theatre discipline. I incorporated the concepts that were taught into an improvisation course and presented these ideas at a UW System, OPID Teaching and Learning conference. Later, I also developed a new course as part of our general education program that combined the three pillars of sustainability with acting concepts.
WTFS and SoTL programs, assisted my Creative Scholarship in that due to being an active participant for multiple years, I observed other UW System faculty applying these concepts and ideas to their research and teaching. The OPID Faculty college often had a Keynote speaker or Keynote presentation/performance on the opening night of the summer program. In 2014, I was half of a Keynote Arts Presentation Program: Feminist Research in the Arts: Lady Gregory’s Journey, Performance of a One Person Play about Lady Gregory. When I offered to perform my one woman show, the OPID organizers invited me to do so. I had set aside the script for a few years because I was at a point where I did not think it was of interest to others. I was thinking of not continuing the writing of it. The performance went well and the feedback I received from the audience gave me the forward moving motivation to continue working on the project and it is now a more compete script.
In relation to leadership skills and positions, my SoTL experiences put me on that path. At the campus level, as a former SOTL mentee, I became a SoTL Mentor to a SoTL mentee, so in effect was “giving back” from my experience. After this, I was asked to lead the SoTL Mentoring program and workshops which I did for two years. I was invited to be a member of our campus CETL Leadership Council that collaborated with the CETL Director and helped plan workshops and the weeklong annual Provost Summit on Teaching and Learning.
Over time, I became involved in OPID leadership positions as well. My experience in the WTFS was a steppingstone to becoming a known and respected member of the UW System SoTL community. During my immersion into the faculty college workshops, the UW System spring teaching and learning conference and the January meeting times of the WTFS, I met and became friends and colleagues with faculty members from across the UW System. It was a breath of fresh air to be able to share both successes and struggles with people who could relate to similar campus struggles going on throughout the state; yet who did not directly work on the same campus. I attended and presented at numerous SoTL events and conferences. It was a very productive time in my teaching career.
I then was nominated to the OPID Leadership Council, as the Faculty Representative for the UW Oshkosh campus. I fulfilled this position from August of 2014 through August of 2018. This was a leadership group that had a faculty and an administrative representative from each UW System campus. We developed plans and areas of focus in collaboration with the SoTL offices or programs across the state. We helped to plan the annual spring OPID conference on Teaching and Learning including suggesting and inviting speakers, making decisions about conference submissions, planning the summer Faculty College and serving as observers of the various summer workshops and then reporting on those observations. During this time, I was elected to the OPID Executive Advisory Committee as a representative from the OPID Council. I then was elected Chair of the Executive Committee. When the former OPID Director left for new opportunities, I took on a more substantial workload with my colleagues on the Executive Committee and with the WTFS Directors in keeping things afloat until we had an interim director in place and a search could take place. When our current OPID Director, Fay Akindes was hired, I helped with the transition.
I then became the Chair of the UW Oshkosh Theatre Department and due to the extensive nature of those duties and the related workload, I needed to step away from my ongoing OPID and SoTL participation. In writing this narrative, I realize that I have missed the many connections that OPID, SoTL and the WTFS offered me throughout my higher education career in Wisconsin. These programs were and are true assets for my teaching abilities and for my ability to earn Tenure and promotion including promotion to Professor. They also provided a foundation for my ability to have a sabbatical approved that continued my work on the Lady Gregory one person play discussed earlier. The domino effect of these process-centered and teacher-centered programs has been evident in the numerous creative scholarly presentations, talks and performances that I have completed during my seventeen academic years of teaching in the UW System. The support they offer to those teaching in the proverbial trenches is priceless. Thank you for the opportunity to share my story.
Biography:
Jane is Chair and Professor of Theatre at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh. She is a professional actor, director, and dialect coach. Through a fellowship at The Actors Center in New York she studied with academy award winner, Olympia Dukakis and Moscow Art Theatre Director Slava Dolgachev. She is a Certified Teacher of Fitzmaurice Voicework®, has studied Improvisation with Second City co-founder Paul Sills and is a Certified Stage Combatant in Rapier Dagger, Hand to Hand and Quarterstaff. Milwaukee acting highlights include performing at Milwaukee Repertory Theatre, Renaissance Theaterworks and as the on-air host of WVTV’s Inside/Outside Milwaukee. Minneapolis highlights include performing in the Acting Company of the Minnesota Shakespeare Company for five years and performing at Orchestra Hall with the Minnesota Orchestra.
Jane has been the Region III Coordinator of the Institute for Theatre Journalism and Advocacy for the Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival, Region III and is a past Co-Chair of Mid-America Theatre Conference’s Acting and Directing Symposium and Playwriting Symposium. She has an extensive background, training and creative scholarly work related to the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning.
Recently, Professor Purse-Wiedenhoeft received a Kennedy Center, Gold Medallion Award from the Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival (KCACTF), Region III. The Medallion honors individuals or organizations that have made extraordinary contributions to the teaching and producing of theatre and who have significantly dedicated their time, artistry and enthusiasm to the development of the Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival. Most importantly, recipients have demonstrated a strong commitment to the values and goals of KCACTF and to excellence in educational theatre. It is the most prestigious regional award given by KCACTF and is considered one the great honors in theatre education.