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For the renewal file - constructive criticism welcome...

Personal Statement

At the conclusion of each semester at the School of Drama I find myself giving the same short speech over and over.

“…an opportunity for you to tell us about what is working well, and what isn’t, what you have conquered, and maybe what conquered you, what you need to work on, what you are looking forward to, and maybe even a little bit about what you are doing away from the Purnell Center….”

The words are the preamble to each student semester review session. In many ways, the faculty review process although less frequent is looking for the same information.

This review is an opportunity to present the status of efforts in teaching, advising, research, artistic undertaking, career development, and professional service. Although unlike the student reviews, it is likely that the emphasis here will dwell on successes. And why not, it is the successes that make for a strong faculty member, and that enhance the school, the college, and the university as a whole.

Over the last three years I have discovered many things that are working well, and some that are not. The period has been one of unprecedented growth for me professionally. My perspective has come to be much closer to that of the academic model, and I understand the institutional processes and pace of change. I believe I have conquered multiple challenges, although many certainly remain. More importantly I have developed a greater sense for knowing where and when to apply myself to a challenge. I believe I know what the next projects should be, and I very much look forward to the endeavors, both on my own and in collaboration with professional colleagues. I have expanded my sphere of influence and look forward to the continued work to build myself as a professional, increase the profile of this institution within the community, and to better the form as a whole.

I am gratified to have this chance to gather together the various components of my experience over the last three years and to look at them as a single accomplishment for presentation to the review committees. Certainly I hope the work looks as rewarding to you now as it has been for me along the way.

In the broadest terms, I should start by saying I really feel as if I am just hitting my stride. This is manifesting itself along each axis of my experience, but it is worth particular note in the dimension of teaching.

Several years ago I remember attending a School of Drama faculty meeting where we were discussing curriculum. Someone from the university, had come to speak to us as a group. One of the things she said struck me sharply at the time and has stayed with me ever since:

“I don’t feel comfortable teaching a course until I have taught it seven times.”

At the time it stung me because looking around I could count no Production Technology & Management faculty that could ever have been comfortable with course content under that standard. In fact at the time, to my recollection, there may have been no PTM faculty member ever who would have had that opportunity. The idea resonates with me now because I have reached that plateau with several of my courses and I am feeling as if the teaching experience has become different.

Early on, the classroom time was mostly about the outline; making sure I had the correct content accounted for and that I was able to deliver it in the time I had. Musically it would have been a march: defined, precise, and regimented. Recently classroom instruction has been more about where things will go from the outline; what current examples are available, what relevant tangents can be discovered, where the students will drive the lecture themselves with questions. What is on the page is only the structure, what was a march has become much more like jazz. The greatest value of the time is in what comes from improvisation.

My foundation level teaching has become very solid. I believe the Production Planning class in particular has had a tremendous impact. It provides an excellent foundation for students moving into technical direction and production management, but has also built an appreciation of resources in students of design. This resource based approach to production has manifested itself over and over in extremely real world like processes within School of Drama productions. The AutoCAD and Rigging courses have also paid off well in subsequent course work, school productions, and as a tool in the collection of job seeking graduates. The transition of this established material into the new footprint established by the school wide curricular review is an upcoming challenge I am very much looking forward to.

Smaller, upper level teaching has also come along very nicely. Another quote from the past has often provided me with necessary perspective for the management of upper level students. Several years ago in a discussion about student behavior a faculty member made this statement:

“Students don’t respect you until you come with the building.”

This was a phenomenon I definitely feel like I experienced. The beginning of my experience as an instructor at CMU was very much an uphill climb. Several upper level students definitely felt as if losses of some of their existing faculty represented something being taken from them. This posture effected work in advanced classes, in production mentoring, and in work on graduate thesis projects. I am glad to say that between my own development, and the fact that I now do come with the building this issue is significantly better now than in the past. The upper level coursework and thesis projects are much more rigorous and grounded, and the student work has improved congruently.

I had always felt previously that as an instructor I had been too far away from the production process here at the school. I arrived to find a student culture where working with an advisor was considered a weakness or a failure. In the past, just getting a meeting with a student technical director had been a struggle. Getting them to follow advice offered as a suggestion was nearly impossible. Rewardingly, work done by myself and others among the faculty and staff to standardize the production schedule, make the budgeting process more familiar, and to establish expected deliverables from technical directors has gone a long way toward reshaping the student culture. There are still some students who feel an advisors input represents meddling, there always will be, the cowboy mentality is common among people that pursue this kind of work. But that student is now in the minority.

One of the biggest stride hitting moments of late was the implementation of the production “crazy scheme.” For many reasons it seemed like we might be better off pedagogically if we shifted away from the traditional way we had always staffed our shows. School of Drama productions had always been handled as if we were a small regional theatre and therefore each show got a Technical Director, an Assistant Technical Director, and a Master Carpenter. The people with those titles worked on the one project from beginning to end and were limited to working on that production for the duration. This tended to have people working on projects for prolonged periods regardless of the workload and to have individual students assigned to work that didn’t necessarily match their aptitude or experience. Shifting from a regional theatre to a commercial scene shop model very much improved this situation. By essentially putting the full group to work on all of the productions we were able to put people where they were best suited when they were most needed. The new structure also provided new opportunities for both lower and higher level students, giving the former an opportunity to taste the experience without carrying the full load and the latter an opportunity to concurrently manage several production efforts. Again, the continued development of this effort in the context of the curricular review is a project I look forward to.

The curricular development work that the school has engaged in over the last three years has been a tremendous experience. I have to confess to falling for the process head over heels. I am a person who often questions why I am doing something and someone that likes things to make sense and track back to the source. The process going from mission/vision, through school pillars, on to learning objectives, vetting through survey and focus groups, matching to discipline mastery grids, and transitioning into new syllabi has been astounding. I feel like we are all so much better off for having done it, and I feel privileged to having been present on the committees that have done the work. Having such a cohesive plan and foundation is almost decadent. Students will benefit from this work for years to come.

I have brought this foundation to bear on every level of the work I am doing. Syllabi and project work are always matched to mastery models, looking at aptitudes as well as trying to form a holistic path from where the students are coming from and where they need to finish. I have gone as far as to map each assignment to the school’s strategic planning pillars, indicating which projects provide exploration through education, leadership, community, experimentation, or diversity.

This indexing has shown me where I have gaps in my coursework, allowing me to provide new content and projects to help meet these school wide goals.

Another direct response to these goals has been the creation of a web portal News from the Real World (http://cmuptm.blogspot.com). Principally as a facilitation of the Community pillar, the page provides links to other School of Drama resources, to course syllabi, listings of School and University announcements, a record of homework assistance, and most importantly links to theatre arts news from over 60 regional sources. Articles featured center on community, leadership, and experimentation through the context of new work, producing, new technology, and labor organizing. At the top of the previous academic year students in my courses were unaware of ongoing labor negotiations between the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust and IATSE Local #3 (International Alliance of Stage Employees). Hopefully the presence and integration of this web news portal will promote our local community news in such a way that the students are no longer so detached. I look forward to maintaining this resource, and to making available to an expanded group of students, alumni, and professionals.

Things feeling like they have been falling into place well are not limited to the teaching portion of my work. In the realm of career development, things like creative projects and research, projects have been coming along very nicely as well. The last couple of years have seen opportunities for publishing, national presentations, and direct contribution to the entertainment industry as a whole.

This past November saw the culmination of my longest running project. Tracking back to graduate school I have been researching and working on the implementation of an entertainment industry technical skill certification. My graduate thesis was a study of industrial certification. I then worked with ESTA (Entertainment Service and Technology Association) on continued research, industry surveying, and laying the groundwork for a certification program. Prior to last November I was working with the ETCP (Entertainment Technician Certification Program) as a subject matter expert on the development of a certification test for Theatrical Riggers. Last fall the program went live, and I am proud to say that as well as now being one of the first class of certified riggers, I was also one of the team that made the certification a reality in the first place. Next I hope to have my Rigging Seminar syllabus accredited by the ETCP for continuing education credit for certified riggers.

The certification work has occupied most of the available time for this segment of my career. However, even so there has been other progress as well. I have managed to make some inroads into publishing; I recently authored three articles and participated as an editor on a book. I have begun to build an industry presence as a consultant in rigging and architecture. I am hoping to be able to expand that presence into more general technical direction and into education, a book would seem to be a requirement for that and I have begun that project as well. And even though technical direction opportunities are few and far between for someone that has a full time job, I even had the chance to TD a show this last year for the School of Music. I believe continued development along all of these paths is instrumental to my professional growth and am committed to doing what is necessary to continue my progress.

The work I have done previously with ESTA and the ETCP has lead to other opportunities for industry service. Currently I am also working with ESTA on a working group researching essential technician skills, and another group working to publish the results, probably online for the use of the entire industry. I’ve also attained a leadership position within USITT (United States Institute of Theatre Technology) as a project leader for commercial theatre outreach. As a working professional and as an instructor at a high end theatre school I have become worried about the disconnect between the commercial sector of scenic fabrication and the rest of the industry. My project is investigating ways of bringing the groups together. One of the aims of the work is to provide an atmosphere on cooperation between the commercial and educational sectors of scenic fabrication like we see in other industries.

As often as possible, I try to bring any of this outside work to the classroom as quickly as possible. The ETCP work has already started to change my Rigging and Technical Design syllabi. The ESTA projects have worked their way into discussions of the new “Basic PTM” class launching this fall. I am hoping that the USITT work will generate guests and master classes, as well as possible research partnerships with scenic fabricators and industry vendors. Although this outside work is interesting of its own right, the synergy between the teaching, research, and service is what makes being a professor at CMU so rewarding.

If I may, without being too heavy handed, there are a couple of things I would like to especially call to the attention of the committee and reviewers:

First and foremost I want to reiterate the culmination of the certification work. This has been no less than a 10 year process, involving a who’s who of people from the entertainment technology field. Being a part of it has been immeasurably rewarding for myself, and a great step forward for the industry and for workplace safety.

With regard to outside “creative activities.” It is simply not possible for a Technical Director to pick up projects in the manner that a faculty member in Design or Directing can. Entertainment companies hire artistic staff as jobbers, freelancers for show specific projects. The same companies looking to hire someone for Technical Direction are looking for a full time employee. The result being that the only high profile, career enhancing opportunities available currently to someone in my field are only available at the expense of my teaching position. However, in spite of this handicap I believe I have been successful, as even from a somewhat lower profile project like the School of Music opera which I worked on as Technical Director I did manage to convert a very successful project for my upper level course (Technical Design Project #1: Albert Herring Shelves) and an article published in a national magazine (“Roll Me Away.” Lighting and Sound America March 2006). A different rubric must be applied to evaluate professors in production fields.

While preparing this renewal package I’ve of course looked back to the previous submission. That personal statement stressed my commitment to the formation of an artistic home, to excellence in production and education, to a strong foundation and explaining the reasoning behind traditional solutions, to collaboration, creativity and professionalism, and to my own esprit de corps for the school. I still feel passionately about all of those things, if maybe a little less frenziedly. The work of the intervening years has advanced all of those causes, and I believe that my own personal growth, that my experience and perspective have only made me that much better at what I do, and so much better at collaborating with the other faculty here at CMU. I am optimistic and excited about the opportunities and challenges that lay ahead. I look forward to having my chance to move forward.