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Lauren Friesen: I think the unique blend of very committed faculty, I don't find any other
liberal arts program that has such a broad spectrum and such committed people. We have
historians, literature people, people in theatre, as well as political science and social work
and it really gives students a wide array of courses and they're all taught by fairly
well-established professors, so that when you finish the program, you will have connections
here for a long time. Many liberal studies programs that I have looked at will rely upon
maybe one or two core faculty and the rest will be graduate assistants or part time people
who fill in the gap and here we've really done the opposite. We've made it something
that some very advanced, very specialized faculty want to do. The theatre community
concentration blends the study of American culture, which is what the master of liberal
studies focuses with different theatre skills and the goal is to try provide students with
backgrounds so that when they finish they can take theatre into the community and make
it work. The goal is not to prepare people for the professional stage and what that might
require, instead we want people to be able to analyze what are the needs of the community,
if they take story telling, what are the stories from the community, if they're taking the
social work/political science part of the program, what are the political commitments,
what are the social needs, and if they're doing more the poetry/English/film studies
part of the program, where are those dimensions in the local community and how to devise and
develop theatre activities and events that utilize their skills. This might be in a school
so that a teacher could use drama in a new way, it might be with somebody already active
in theatre in a community, but now has more skills to do it, or it might be somebody trying
to figure out a second career, say I'd like to work with this theatre company and right
now I have some interests but I need more breadth and more deepth to figure out how
that can be done and we have all of these students in the program right now. Probably
the best experience I've had so far are a couple of students that have worked very closely
with me and they've worked hard at developing new plays, they worked hard at understanding
American culture in a new way, and as one student reported this winter after taking
two of my classes, I can see now how theatre is like a window to American society. I had
never thought of that before, that once you understand what theatre has done in America,
you have a new vision as to what America is, and I think that is really what the program
is set to do. The other really fascinating thing is all these students want to take it
to another level. Some of them want to continue graduate studies in theatre, others want to
study in some aspect of American culture, but where theatre is very prominent. For example,
one student wants to go into women's studies and study women and theatre in society, but
in a women's studies program and I think that's really what this program prepares someone
to do. There's another student who's looking at trying to become a company manager for
a theatre company and now wants to do a MBA along with his theatre and community degree
and hopefully he will be hired to run a theatre company. That's what his vision has become.
And I think part of it is giving students that challenge, the tools to be able to analyze
themselves and what their skills are, and then how to analyze where the opportunities
might be given what this university program has to offer and I find that really meaningful.
But it truly is a humanities focused program specializing in aiding the student to grow
personally. And I've seen the students from the beginning to the end of the program and
their confidence level changes completely. At the end they are willing to get up and
speak to groups in ways that they were not at the beginning, and that I think is part
of the progress of that student. I don't know of any other program as unique this and that
students who avail themselves to this opportunity have doors that open to them in almost every
instance. If they do well in this setting and enjoy the learning opportunities provided,
there are so many avenues they can go from here, and I have just seen that happen over
and over again. It is not the final step in their journey.