Welcome to the incoming classes of 2014!  We're happy to welcome another talented and energetic class of Arts Administration students joining us on campus and online.  We have 34 new incoming students this year, half online and half on campus.  About half of all of these students hail from Pennsylvania, with strong additional contingents from New York and New Jersey.  Other states represented are Michigan, Missouri, Florida, California, Maryland, Ohio, Louisiana, Wisconsin, Oklahoma, and North Carolina, and we also have several students hailing from China, from Nanjing and Shanghai. 

For the second time this fall, incoming Arts Administration and Museum Leadership students participated in a combined orientation day featuring all full-time AADM and MUSL faculty, as well as a panel of students and alums who offered excellent advice on getting the most out of your graduate education. We enjoyed a Mural Arts tour, were introduced to the Jeremy Holmes installation, Convergence, curated by AADM student Marnie Lersch, and saw the Leah Stein Dancers performing in and around the installation.

Jean, Julie, Andrew and Neville are all working this year on completing the PAR (Program Alignment and Review) process, a periodic review process that includes reviewing our curriculum and seeking input from current students, alumni, faculty, and external reviewers.  We look forward to having a chance to take a fresh look at our program, and to letting you know what we learn through this process. 

All of our AADM faculty have been engaged in a major effort in the last year and a half to encourage all outstanding thesis writers to complete their thesis and graduate.  This allows us to maintain our focus on current thesis writers, who are all working on a much tighter schedule for completion than had historically been done in the program.  This has resulted in 28 students completing their thesis this past summer, and a record 64 students graduating in the last 12 months. 

Our faculty have been busy on the research front again.  Here are just a few new things that our faculty have been involved in:

• Neville Vakharia, Julie Hawkins, and Dr. Andrew Zitcer all attended and presented their research, "A Fragile Ecosystem," at the recent International Conference of Social Theory, Politics and the Arts in Ottawa, Canada.  Alum Jonathan Kitt also presented his master's thesis research, "African American Individual Philanthropy at Large, Mainstream, Nonprofit Performing Arts Organizations in New York City." You can read a brief report on their presentations here.

• Neville Vakharia has received a grant in collaboration with Partners for Sacred Spaces to create a national, scalable model for matching arts organizations with available space in historic sacred spaces.  He has also had his article, authored with AADM alum Divya Janardhan, "Towards a Knowledge-Centric Arts Organization," published in the American Journal of Arts Management. 

• Dr. Andrew Zitcer worked with the LeBow College of Business to lead an executive training session for Philadelphia's Emerging Leaders.  His article "Food Co-ops and the Paradox of Exclusivity" was accepted for publication by Antipode: A Journal of Radical Geography.  

• Students who are interested in participating in faculty-led research projects should contact the faculty, as new opportunities may arise as the year goes on.  Students from both the campus and the online programs have been able to participate in funded research projects in recent years, so let us know!

In exploring the characteristics that bind our experiences, I asked several Arts Administration graduate students to write about their involvement with fringe festivals nationally and internationally. Bound by a brief period of time, based in a particular location, and heavily influenced by the participants and creators, fringe festivals are incubators for ideas and creativity, pushing participants to explore art and art-making in unexpected ways. Students Thom Wall, Naima Murphy, and Wilna Julmiste share their thoughts below.

Inspired Impulses: Shaped by Location, by Thom Wall

"The 'Dinner and a Show' Show," written by myself and juggler Benjamin Domask for the Kansas City Fringe Festival, was heavily influenced by places, both in its format and its content.  As participants in MoonDrop Circus' "Community Circus Week" in Kansas City, we devised a short piece for their open-stage kickoff show. The work we created - a ten-minute-long silent, volunteer-driven juggling number - was the impetus for what became an hour-long theater show as a part of the Kansas City Fringe Festival. Debuting this work in the festival was our way of giving back to the community that gave birth to the project.

Our venue for the Kansas City Fringe was in Union Station, at a small theater right next door to the "King Tut: Recreated" exhibit.  Patrons had to walk past a dizzying number of "King Tut: This Way!" signs and posters on their way to our stage, and a number of self-referencing lines about the exhibit crept their way into our shows.  We played on the Midwest's modest reputation in other parts of the show, with lines like "What could be more refreshing than seafood in Missouri in the middle of July?" and on inter-citiy rivalries with jokes about Chicago and St. Louis.   These moments all resulted from the venues we played and the communities we entertained - without them, the show wouldn't have developed the same way.

This December, Benjamin and I are taking a residency at the New England Center for Circus Arts, where we are workshopping the piece for the 2015 season.  Though we are consciously planning some changes - losing the variety format in favor of subtler moments to integrate skills and routines, for example - we know that it's impossible to predict just how the next location will shape the next iteration of "The 'Dinner and a Show' Show." 

Adventure in Search of a Thesis, by Naima Murphy

This summer, in search of thesis research and personal adventure, I spent one week at Burning Man in Black Rock City, NV. There are aspects of Burning Man that reflect the festival culture we know -- music, dance parties, panel discussions, its temporary nature -- but more importantly, an entire city, culture and philosophy is constructed for the week-long event. With only mass-media interpretations to draw from, I found myself excited and terrified by the abundance of sensory experiences available in Nevada's desert.

What I found immediately is that Black Rock City is strangely familiar. It is an experiential playground that taps into the feeling you get when you follow every instinct. Acting as an observer feels like a disservice to the community and the art. Installations scattered about the desert beg to be explored and trusting strangers with your mood is commonplace. Even while waiting in line for coffee, books in the city's center camp prompt community members to record their earliest memory and share parts of their bucket list. These goals of pursuing curiosity, being kind and taking ownership in your own experiences are at the core of Burning Man's mission. It can be hard to find independence in a space so bound to community, but Burning Man had a way of forcing me to toe that line and trust my instincts. I cannot wait to return and see what next year's version of Burning Man holds in store.

Theater and Bagpipes, by Wilna Julmiste

Set in the middle of the beautiful and scenic town of Edinburgh, Scotland, the 67-year-old Fringe Festival is a revelatory experience not just for those who love theatre but for all who have an appreciation of dynamic art and entertainment. Whether you arrive as an official Fringe participant, set for the three intense weeks of performance in August, or as an enthusiastic audience member, there is a collective spark in the air. The whole city is transformed for the festival, pulsing with energy and anticipation, preparing for almost 50,000 performances of 3,200 shows in 299 venues.

The first time I traveled to the Edinburgh Fringe, I went as a performer with a theatre ensemble.  Our production won the coveted Fringe First award, the first American theatre group to win a Fringe First for the performance venue.  My second trip to the Fringe Festival came as a student through the Drexel study abroad program. I gained a valuable perspective on how the largest and most successful fringe festival in the world is managed. The location played a major part in shaping my learning, as did my dual perspectives of active participant and arts analyst. I encourage all to attend!

Thom Wall is a graduate student at Drexel, taking courses online as he travels the world performing.  He's currently finishing up a three-country tour with Cirque du Soleil's "TOTEM," where he performs a headline juggling act. To read more about Thom's work, please click here. 

Naima Murphy is a second year graduate student and the Group Sales Associate at the Please Touch Museum. 

Wilna Julmiste is a second year graduate student in the Arts Administration program at Drexel University.

Student Donald Hunt began working as the Executive Assistant at Settlement Music School.

Clare Lowry, a first-year student, is now the Marketing Intern at the Pennsylvania Ballet. 

Student Naima Murphy accepted a position as Group Sales Associate at the Please Touch Museum.

First-year student Nicole Myles is now the Communications and Programming Intern at the Leeway Foundation. 

In July, alumna Lindsay Kenney ('12) opened Mosaic Music Lessons in Phoenixville PA with her husband, Joe Kenney. Mosaic Music Lessons is a private studio with a staff of seven and an enrollment of 60 students. The studio works with nonprofit Musicopia by serving as an instrument drop-off location and collecting musical instruments for children in need.