Fall 2014 Faculty Hires

Florida State University College of Fine Arts is pleased to announce the new Fall 2014 faculty members. The Departments of Art and Art Education, the Maggie Allesee National Center for Choreography (MANCC) and the School of Dance welcome MK Haley, Entrepreneur in Residence; Carla Peterson, Director of MANCC; Dan Torop, Assistant Professor of Art; Hannah Schwadron, Assistant Professor of Dance; Ann Rowson Love, Assistant Professor of Art Education; and Sara Scott Shields, Assitant Professor of Art Education. The College wishes the very best to its newest members as the Fall 2014 semester gets underway.

Mk Haley

MK Haley is Florida State University’s new Entrepreneur in Residence. Her areas of expertise include digital media, digital technology, entertainment technology, experiential design and virtual reality. She is teaching Interaction and Advocacy for the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory (ART4229C) and Creating Experiences (ART4930C) this Fall. Both of these courses are open to all students within the university and is a flexible model that can respond to industry trends and easily incorporate multiple disciplines in collaborative projects. The intent is to draw the most talent and take advantage of the strongest speciality programs and individuals and allow them to work together. MK Haley received her M.F.A. from California State University in computer animation. She has been with The Walt Disney Company since 1994 servicing primarily with Walt Disney Imagineering in both technical and creative roles with the Virtual Reality teams, R&D, Special FX, Show Quality Services and the Disney Research Labs. These teams allowed support of projects with a 10 year lead time, to critical in-park issues that needed immediate solutions. Mk has also served Disney Corporate initiatives related to New Technology programs and collaboration tools, as well as Disney Digital Media initiatives with their Television Groups.  She has been an educator for 20 years teaching at both the high school and university level, including the Imagineering – UCLA partnership in Themed Entertainment Design, and recently served as both the Associate Executive Producer and Faculty at the Entertainment Technology Center at Carnegie Mellon University. With more than 25 years of service to ACM SIGGRAPH, Mk more recently served as the SIGGRAPH 2013 Conference Chair and as the Themed Entertainment Association’s SATE Conference Technology Track Chair for 2013 & 2014.

Read more on MK Haley.

Maggie Allesee National Center for Choreography (MANCC) 

Carla Peterson

Florida State’s College of Visual Arts, Theatre and Dance is also pleased to welcome Carla Peterson, the new director of the Maggie Allesee National Center for Choreography (MANCC). After a nationwide search, Peterson was selected to lead the prestigious national center for choreography in the United States forward into its second decade. Peterson began her appointment on May 7th, 2014 after more than twenty years of service and leadership in the New York dance and performance community. Peterson served previously as the Artistic Director of New York Live Arts, a position she also held at Dance Theater Workshop (DTW); immediately prior to that she served as Executive Director of Movement Research. Peterson has had a long relationship with the Center. She has served as a member of the MANCC National Resource Council and as a panelist for the MANCC Choreographic Fellowship program. Peterson continues to serve on numerous national panels. In 2005, she was awarded a “Bessie” (New York Dance and Performance Award) in recognition of her leadership of Movement Research and her dedication to the dance community. She currently serves on the boards of two progressive arts organizations, Movement Research and Mount Tremper Arts and on the Steering Committee of the NY Dance and Performance Awards, under the auspices of DanceNYC. She holds an M.F.A. from the Ohio State University and a B.S. from the University of Illinois.  She was made a Chevalier de L’Ordre des Arts et Des Lettres in 2012 by the French government.

Department of Art

Dan Torop

The Department of Art is thrilled to introduce their new assistant professor, Dan Torop. This semester he is teaching both Emerging and Traditional Aspects of Photography and deeply interested in digital work that addresses the subjective relationships between the land and its inhabitants. Torop’s exhibit Alkali Desert has been installed at the Center For Land Use Interpretation’s Exhibit Hall One (Wendover, Utah), TOPS Gallery (Memphis, TN) and The Green Gallery (Milwaukee, WI). His 2010 series of landscapes and portraits, “Skydiving”, was exhibited at Derek Eller Gallery, New York and comprised a publication from A-Jump Books which the International Center for Photography featured in its 2013 Triennial photobooks installation. Since 1999 Dan Torop has had six solo shows of his photographs in New York City. His digital “Ocean” has been installed at the American Museum of the Moving Image and the San Francisco Exploratorium. During a 2013-14 residency at Milwaukee’s Lynden Sculpture Garden, Torop investigated the land’s history and the passage of seasons and creatures across it. This work will culminate in an exhibition and publication in 2015. He has recently been granted residencies at the MacDowell Colony (2013) and the Center for Land Use Interpretation (2011). He has contributed photography and essays to Triple Canopy, Paper Monument and numerous other publications. He received his B.A. and a Gardner Traveling Fellowship from Harvard College and his M.F.A. in photography from Yale School of Art.

School of Dance

Hannah Schwadron

The School of Dance is happy to welcome  Assistant Professor Hannah Schwadron as the newest faculty member in the area of Dance History. With a Ph.D. in Critical Dance Studies and a M.F.A. in Experimental Choreography, both from the University of California Riverside, Dr. Schwadron brings a broad array of scholarly, creative research and teaching activities to Florida State. Her areas of specialization include Dance History, Performance Studies, Gender and Sexuality Studies, Jewish Studies, Critical Race Studies, Modern Dance, Choreography, Dance Performance, Improvisation and Movement Theater.

Forthcoming publications from Dr. Schwadron include an article entitled “Pious and Porn Spectacles: US Jewess Choreographies on the Post-fem Frontier” for the upcoming Dance in American Culture, an anthology published by the University Press of Florida and edited by Florida State University School of Dance faculty – Dr. Jen Atkins, Dr. Sally Sommer and Dr. Tricia Young. Additionally, she has contributed “Lesbian Sex and Swan Sin: Domesticating the Queer in Aronofsky’s Black Swan” for the publication, Meaning and Makings of Queer Dance, edited by Clare Croft, soon to be published by Oxford University Press. Dr. Schwadron most recently served as Adjunct Assistant Professor at CUNY Queens College, NY during the 2013/2014 academic year. In addition to her significant research contributions to the dance field, Dr. Schwadron has maintained a very active performance and choreography schedule at venues in Brooklyn, NY and in California. She has also been invited to participate in the Hamburg, Germany citywide Month of Remembrance project this coming spring as a continuation of her presentation of choreographic work there in 2012 on Holocaust themes. We are proud to count Hannah Schwadron as our newest member of faculty.

Department of Art Education

Ann Rowson Love

The Department of Art Education would also like to extend a warm welcome to Assistant Professor Ann Rowson Love.  Ann Rowson Love is a new faculty member in the Arts Administration program, where she is co-developing the Museum Education and Visitor-Centered Exhibitions program (MEX). With a Ph.D. in Art Education from Florida State University and an M.F.A. in Art Museum Education, Dr. Rowson brings a wide array of scholarly and creative skills to Florida State. Her dissertation, available on DigiNole Commons titled: “Inclusive Curatorial Practices: Facilitating Team Exhibition Planning In The Art Museum Using Evaluative Inquiry For Learning In Organizations“, examined the growing art museum practice of using exhibition development teams, where cross-departmental staff members and community members collaborate throughout the planning and implementation of an exhibition. The position that Dr. Rowson Love fills is a new position funded through pre-eminence funding to lead the new Museum Education and Exhibitions (MEX) graduate studies program. She returns to FSU after six years at Western Illinois University-Quad Cities, where she initiated a new graduate museum studies program based at the Figge Art Museum in Davenport, Iowa. Ann Rowson Love has been a practicing art museum educator and curator for over 20 years and helped to establish two new art museums in the Southeast. She has been on the editorial boards of Art Education and the Journal of Art for Life; and an associate for the International Journal of the Inclusive Museum. She has reviewed grants for the Institute of Museum and Library Services “Museums for America” program. She presents nationally and internationally including Barbados, Denmark, Italy, Hungary, Japan and Turkey. She specializes in visitor studies, art museum interpretation and collaborative curatorial practices.

Sara Scott Shields

Additionally, the Department of Art Education is also pleased to welcome Assistant Professor Sara Scott Shields. Currently she is teaching graduate level courses that include Professional Practices: Portfolio. This course enables students to engage in professional development and critical reflection assignments, document their progress in mastering the twelve Florida Educator Accomplished Practices (FEAP) by preparing professional portfolios for both the elementary and secondary art teaching, modify curricula for diverse learners and contexts and participate in online peer discussions. This course is only open to students within the Art Education major.

Dr. Shields received her BFA in Ceramics from East Carolina University. She continued her education at East Carolina and earned her M.A.Ed. in Art Education. In 2014 she achieved her doctorate in Art from the University of Georgia. Her areas of interest include visual journaling and visual thinking skills among others. Her dissertation focused on visual journaling both as a “method” and as a “mode” of inquiry.

Florida State University sincerely welcomes all of the new faculty members to the Seminole tribe and wishes them a fruitful semester.