Theatre
- Mission Statment
The objectives of the programs are to:
- Encourage participation in and appreciation of theatre and drama; Foster creativity and develop technical skills in acting, directing, costuming, scenic design, script writing and theatre management; Use and develop higher level thinking skills including analysis, synthesis, and creation in understanding and organizing knowledge; Prepare students through course work, practical experience, and continual assessments, including twice yearly faculty adjudicated juries, for careers or professional schooling in those fields that require strong presentational skills, creative problem solving, effective collaboration, and an understanding of human experience.
- Student Learning Outcomes
- Certificates (Not Applicable)
- Associate Degrees
Students completing the Associate of Arts or Sciences in Technical Theatre will be able to demonstrate the following outcomes:
- 1. Have writing skills and ability to use research tools (library, internet, etc).
- 2. Be able to present critical thinking through verbal and written presentations regarding the theatre. Specific areas of expertise will include major works, major figures, theory, and history.
- 3. Have a practical, working knowledge of how to produce a play on stage, including all related performance, script, design, and technical considerations.
- 4. Be able to critically evaluate what they and others have created.
- 5. Develop necessary skills to be proficicient in at least one area of theatre (performance, teaching, technical/design-costume, technical/design-scenery, technical/design-lighting, technical/design-sound, directing, theatre management, or playwriting), with the ability to identify, analyze, and resolve specific problems pertaining to that area.
- 6. Understand the historical context of theatre, drama, and performance including plays, major figures, costumes, scenic innovations, and theoretical approaches, and how these relate to contemporary society and culture.
- 7. Have experience with individual and collaborative processes needed to produce and understand theatre.
- Bachelor Degrees
Students completing Bachelor of Arts degrees in Musical Theatre, Theatre Arts, and Theatre Arts Teaching will demonstrate the following outcomes:
- 1. Have writing skills and ability to use research tools (library, internet, etc).
- 2. Be able to present critical thinking through verbal and written presentations regarding the theatre. Specific areas of expertise will include major works, major figures, theory, and history.
- 3. Have a practical, working knowledge of how to produce a play on stage, including all related performance, script, design, and technical considerations.
- 4. Be able to critically evaluate what they and others have created.
- 5. Develop necessary skills to be proficicient in at least one area of theatre (performance, teaching, technical/design-costume, technical/design-scenery, technical/design-lighting, technical/design-sound, directing, theatre management, or playwriting), with the ability to identify, analyze, and resolve specific problems pertaining to that area.
- 6. Understand the historical context of theatre, drama, and performance including plays, major figures, costumes, scenic innovations, and theoretical approaches, and how these relate to contemporary society and culture.
- 7. Have experience with individual and collaborative processes needed to produce and understand theatre.
- Certificates (Not Applicable)
- Curriculum Grid
- Program and Contact Information
Communicating through performance is one of the fundamental human activities. As small children we learn through play, pretending to be someone or something we are not. We make up elaborate games of make believe in order to make sense of the world.
The art form of Theatre has always been asked to teach and to please. Our students take the natural impulse to pretend and refine that into skills. These skills include practical things like movement, voice, character building, theatrical design and construction, writing and analyzing scripts. But they also include higher level thinking skills like executive function, developing discipline and self-control, and metacognition, an awareness of what one is good at and what skills one needs to improve.
Theatre students must complete a sequence of formal course work that includes University general education, core theatre courses, and focus or specialty courses. Formal course work is complemented by a sequence of experiential learning opportunities in the theatre. Students and faculty develop individualized programs of course work and practical experience, including a junior seminar, annual juries, portfolio preparation, various practica, and opportunities for individual theatre projects.
Study of theatre provides students with useful tools to contribute to and make positive changes in society. Theatre students learn about diverse historical eras, communities and technologies. Theatre challenges students to be creative and to translate that creativity into applied processes to think precisely, speak confidently in public, work productively with others, visualize abstract concepts and represent those concepts concretely. Theatre skills are useful in a variety of professions including, but not limited to, business, government, law, journalism, and public relations.
Contact Information:
Dr. Jenny Kokai
Weber State University
1905 University Circle
Ogden, UT 84408-1905
Browning Center, rm 305
(801) 626-6624 - Assessment Plan
- The plan for courses within the major is current as listed on the website. Data continues to be gathered from Juries thrice yearly (the beginning of the year for new students as a bench mark, and then at the end of each semester) and artifacts are collected from all listed classes and uploaded to a shared Google drive for all other classes.
- We are currently implementing a revised plan for assessment for general education. For each general education class within theatre: Introduction to Theatre, Acting for Non-Majors, Introduction to Film, and Introduction to Musical Theatre, we have selected two assignments. One demonstrates Creative Arts General Education Learning Outcome 1, and the other Learning Outcome 2. Starting in Spring 2016 we are asking instructors to score these assignments with a standard rubric for each assignment designed by the area head that course falls within (so Tracy Callahan for Acting, Jenny Kokai for Introduction to Theatre, Jim Christian for Musical Theatre and Catherine Zublin for Film) and we are collecting data to report. We are also asking instructors to upload artifacts to a shared Google Drive that illustrate an A example, a C example, and an E example of work. This is a totally new assessment plan as the department has recently restructured to have Program Directors with more control over their own programs (so Theatre has a Program Director), where previously the expectation was the Chair of the department would do it. Implementing this assessment plan will take us a few years and cycles of assessment, but we will bring it up to the high standards of assessment we have implemented for the classes within the Theatre Major as rapidly as we are able.
- Assessment Report Submissions
- 2021-2022
1) Review and comment on the trend of minority students enrolling in your classes (particularly lower-division, GEN Ed) and in your programs.
Coincidentally, I had reached out to Chaz Steimel to ask him these very questions. I note that this data is not standardly available to folks which makes this question quite frustrating to ask us. I note that overall, our THEA 1023, Intro to Film, has the best enrollment from minority students—it has 29% global majority students enrolled which exceeds the percentage of these students at the university as a whole (at 74%). The other frequent gen eds hover around 23% global majority, which is slightly less than representational percentage. One, THEA 2821, only enrolls 16% global majority students—which demonstrates that it is not as popular with diverse students. Looking back at the last eight years of trends, this stays true. While the number of students enrolled in other classes varies—Intro to Film stays at about 450 students a year. Theatre has been thinking about our Gen Eds and whether they still serve students in general, along with who they are serving, and we plan to use the data Chaz provided with to help us do this. However, we just got this data so I haven’t really been able to dig into it.
2) What support (from enrollment services, advising, first-year transition office, access & diversity, etc.) do you need to help you recruit and retain students?
We need to collaborate with Dev Math to rethink the offerings and their impact on our students’ success. We need additional support from the student counseling center for students with mental health issues. We need help from Financial Aid because our students “time out” or whatever on their ability to get waivers or money and then I can’t get them to give me the info to show students who stopped out how they can return.
3) We have invited you to re-think your program assessment. What strategies are you considering? What support or help would you like?
Our program assessment has been lauded by the university as the model. So we’re sticking with it. I have focused on our program review for this report to give you the info we think is useful as opposed to evaluating individual classes within the major. I will say that we don’t see any action items out of program reviews, nor any evidence that administration has read them. I do them because I take them seriously for our own purposes but being asked to answer impossible questions etc is very frustrating.
4) Finally, we are supporting our Concurrent Enrollment accreditation process. Does your program offer concurrent enrollment classes? If so, have you been able to submit the information requested from the Concurrent Enrollment office? Staff from OIE will reach out to you in the next few months to assist in finalizing that data submission as well as gather information for concurrent Gen Ed assessment.
We offer Concurrent Enrollment THEA 1013 and are looking at adding THEA 1023. I have provided all the info that has been requested of me.The full report is available for viewing.
- 2019-2020
The Theatre Department conducted a 5 year program review with full self-study during the spring of 2019. Those results are presented in place of the Annual Assessment. Please reference those documents for information that includes data for the 2019-20 academic year.
- 2017
1) Based on your program’s assessment findings, what subsequent action will your program take?
- Due to administrative assignments and changes in personnel the theatre area is looking forward to a more stable learning and teaching environment as we all come back together.
2) We are interested in better understanding how departments/programs assess their graduating seniors or graduate students. Please provide a short narrative describing the practices/curriculum in place for your department/program. Please include both direct and indirect measures employed.
- Finally, what were your findings from this past year’s graduates?
- All of our students, including Graduating Seniors, undertake a Jury in front of the entire faculty where they present materials tied to the learning outcomes for their major or emphasis. We do these Juries for all students each semester, with an additional intake Jury to establish a baseline at the beginning of their Freshman semester.
- The materials Graduating Seniors present are evaluated by our faculty for their proficiency and the students are assessed for their own growth relative to their abilities when they began in the program, relative to other students who are graduating in the same program, and relative to professional expectations for the field. In addition, all Graduating Seniors are evaluated for their abilities in core skills: writing, speaking, professional presentation, organization, discipline, and metacognition.
- Direct measures include the Jury materials which are graded with a rubric, required graded Practicum work, and classwork that is recorded in the Assessment reports. Indirect measures include observation and report.
The full report is available
- 2016
1) Based on your program’s assessment findings, what subsequent action will your program take?
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We will review the way Student Teaching is organized to better ensure that only truly prepared student teachers reach the field. We will also work on how to better systematize data collection for this report from Adjuncts and part time instructors, which can be difficult given that they have no “buy in.”
2) We are interested in better understanding how departments/programs assess their graduating seniors. Please provide a short narrative describing the practices/curriculum in place for your department/program. Please include both direct and indirect measures employed.
- All of our students, including Graduating Seniors, undertake a Jury in front of the entire faculty where they present materials tied to the learning outcomes for their major or emphasis. We do these Juries for all students each semester, with an additional intake Jury to establish a baseline at the beginning of their Freshman semester.
- The materials Graduating Seniors present are evaluated by our faculty for their proficiency and the students are assessed for their own growth relative to their abilities when they began in the program, relative to other students who are graduating in the same program, and relative to professional expectations for the field. In addition, all Graduating Seniors are evaluated for their abilities in core skills: writing, speaking, professional presentation, organization, discipline, and metacognition.
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Direct measures include the Jury materials which are graded with a rubric, required graded Practicum work, and classwork that is recorded in the Assessment reports. Indirect measures include observation and report.
The full report is available for viewing.
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- 2015
1) Based on your program’s assessment findings, what subsequent action will your program take?
- Assessment routinely indicates students are weakest in movement, faculty is putting energy into advocating for a new position that would be a voice and movement specialist. It is our highest hiring priority as assessment indicates it is our greatest need.
- Assessment indicates online classes are not as successful as in person classes (which studies indicate is a general issue across all universities). These classes are also generally taught by adjuncts. Resources will be put into in-services, training, and developing support to improve performance by students in these classes.
- Assessment indicated that students were demonstrating weak rendering skills and design professors have been encouraged to include more drawing practice at all levels.
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Assessment indicated that students who audition for the Musical Theatre major in their Junior or Senior year of school routinely score the poorest across the board in Juries on all Learning Outcomes and the faculty is discussing whether this indicates that auditions should only be open to those in their first two years of study.
2) Are there assessment strategies within your department or program that you feel are particularly effective and/or innovative? If so, what are those strategies and what do you learn about your students by using them?
- The Theatre Program has spent quite an extensive amount of time developing our assessment strategies based upon research and best practices (for which we have won a “BIG” award). While these continue to evolve and be put into place for our General Education classes (as there was some confusion as to whether those were the responsibility and purview of theatre or the Department Chair), the data we gather is essential for making programmatic decisions on all levels, from scholarships, to hiring priorities, to curriculum.
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At this point we have thrice yearly Juries that all faculty and students attend. At the beginning of fall, all new students are required to do a Jury to attain baseline entry scores. Then every student in the program undergoes Juries at the end of each semester and is scored for all program learning outcomes as well as for more granular skills that are essentially to their professional and educational development. We use that data for programmatic things, but we also generate a report using a custom software program to generate a report kept on file in the main office where students have access to their scores and are compared to other students in their same year and program emphasis. They are encouraged to take this data to discuss their progress with their faculty advisor and to use this information when making class choices as it tells them what their strengths and weaknesses are. Indeed, our new students report in Freshman Seminar that scoring a 5 on their Juries (the highest possible score) is now a goal of theirs to accomplish by the time they graduate, which means that they are actively using Assessment data in their educational planning.
The full report can be accessed at this link: Performing Arts - Theatre Annual Assessment of Learning
- 2014
The Performing Arts - Theatre program conducted a five year program review with full self-study during the spring of 2015. Those results are presented in place of the Annual Assessment Report. Please reference those
documents for information that includes data for the 2013/14 academic year. - 2013
1) Reflecting on this year’s assessment(s), how does the evidence of student learning impact your faculty’s confidence in the program being reviewed; how does that analysis change when compared with previous assessment evidence?
- The Theatre Area has created a new assessment plan to better collect data on our students and their accomplishments. Previously, students did one faculty adjudicated jury per year, but no numerical data was attached to these presentations. Now, students will have a jury at the beginning of the fall semester and at the conclusion of the spring semester. These juries will now be numerically scored by each faculty member with a composite number created for assessment and for students’ to see their own progress. This will give us more objective data by which to assess the success of our program and where curricular or program changes are needed.
- As this is a new development, we have no formal assessment data from previous years by which to compare our current program.
2) With whom did you share the results of the year’s assessment efforts?- With the Department of Performing Arts.
3) Based on your program’s assessment findings, what subsequent action will your program take?- As mentioned above, the theatre area has developed a formal and objective way by which to assess the progress of our students and to give us better data on what is successful and what is not.
Select this link to view the full report: Theatre 2013 Annual Assessment of Learning Report and Appendix
- 2021-2022
- Program Review