CHRISTOPHER NIESS APPOINTED CHAIR OF THEATRE DEPARTMENT

The College of Arts and Humanities is pleased to announce that Associate Professor Christopher Niess has been appointed Chair of the Theatre Department.

Professor Niess joined the UCF faculty in 2001, teaching acting, movement and dance. Niess has worked on over 150 productions as director, choreographer, actor, dancer, performance artist or movement coach throughout the US, Canada, Germany and Scotland. He has served as Artistic Director for the Great Lakes Festival Ballet and for Ballet Theatre Ohio.

He was recently selected to co-present a paper at the International Federation for Theatre Research in Libson, Portugal in July, 2009. He will also be on the faculty of the International Performing Arts Institute in Germany later this summer.

SYBIL ST. CLAIRE TO TEACH SEMESTER AT SEA

Sybil St. Claire has been chosen as one of 35 faculty members from universities across the nation to sail as an Instructor aboard the MV Explorer as part of Semester at Sea's Summer 2009 voyage. The leader in global comparative education, Semester at Sea (SAS) is a floating university (complete with state of the art classrooms, a computer lab, and a library) that offers the highest quality international education. This Summer's voyage, with a theme of Human Rights and Social Justice in the Mediterranean, will visit Spain, Italy, Greece, Turkey, Croatia, Bulgaria, Egypt, and Morocco over a 2 1/2 month period.

Semester at Sea is devoted to transformation of the individual through academic excellence and profound learning experiences. Sybil's courses in Acting and Theatre for Social Change will compliment a varied curriculum of classes such as Sustainable Communities, Poetry of Witness, Ethics and Human Rights in World Affairs, Faith and Doubt, Global Music, and International Women's Health.

While at sea classes are held daily, when in port students participate in field excursion designed to experientially extend the classroom experience. Field excursions vary from port to port and include everything from volunteering at orphanages, home stays with local families, and hiking the Turkish mountains to camel trekking in the Sahara, and visits to the pyramids, the Acropolis, and the museums of Rome and Florence. To augment these field excursions Sybil has created trips to the State Puppet Theatre of Varna in Bulgaria, where students and faculty will attend a performance of the "Cave and the Shadows," an award-winning vanguard production for adults, and a Theatre of the Oppressed workshop led by the Artistic Director of Painted Bird Theatre in Istanbul.

Past notable guest lecturers for Semester at Sea include Nelson Mandela, Mother Teresa, Desmond Tutu, Indira Gandhi, and Anwar Sadat. For more information on Semester at Sea visit: http://www.semesteratsea.org