Summer Saved

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The Concordia Association of Students in Theatre is delighted to announce that thanks to the engagement of our student community and a concerted effort on the part of faculty in the Department of Theatre, TDEV 498B/C (Designing and Conducting an Acting Workshop) and TPER 201/202 (Introduction to Acting I and II) will be offered this summer! CAST’s executive received confirmation of this good news from full-time faculty member and Theatre Performance advisor, Ulla Neuerburg-Denzer, in a brief meeting this afternoon. While the online course schedule is not yet entirely accurate, the reinstatement of these courses has been approved by the Dean’s Office and they will be available for registration soon.

Theatre faculty have proposed some other course cuts in order to meet their required targets. These include one winter section of TPER 201 (Introduction to Acting I), a new special topics course, THEA 498Z (New Russian Drama), and one semester’s PROD 311F (Student Initiated Project Assignment) section. This means that, as was the case this year, there will only be SIPAs in one semester. While regrettable, this is not unexpected. CAST is pleased that our faculty have worked to preserve existing course offerings rather than introducing further cuts.

CAST co-president Miriam Cummings and treasurer Ned Zimmerman also had an informative and wide-ranging discussion with Dean of Fine Arts Catherine Wild and Associate Dean for Academic and Student Affairs Mark Sussman yesterday morning following the Dean’s receipt of CAST’s petition calling for dialogue concerning course cuts. The Dean assured us that every effort is being made to minimize the impact of the budgetary constraints on theatre students and invited theatre students to contact her office with any future concerns.

As CAST’s executive, we wish to extend our thanks to our membership for your passion and engagement over the past month. We could not have started this conversation without your support, and we hope that we can continue dialogue within the Concordia Theatre community to make sure that students’ needs are met by the Department and Concordia University. We are also deeply grateful to our faculty, who have worked tirelessly to minimize the impact of the impending budget cuts on our Department.

Excelsior!

Miriam Cummings and Lindsey Huebner, Co-Presidents
Ned Zimmerman, Treasurer
CAST (The Concordia Association of Students in Theatre)