June 25, 2013
Faculty members Franchelle Dorn and Andrea Beckham of The University of Texas at Austin Department of Theatre and Dance are among the recipients from throughout The University of Texas System who have been presented the Board of Regents' Outstanding Teaching Awards.
The awards, which range from $15,000 to $30,000 depending on level of experience, are believed to be among the highest in the country for rewarding outstanding undergraduate faculty performance and innovation.
Candidates for the teaching awards were nominated at the campus level then evaluated on several criteria, including student and peer evaluations, teaching portfolio and student learning outcomes.
Franchelle Dorn is the Virginia L. Murchison Regents Professor in Fine Arts and Distinguished Teaching Professor in the Department of Theatre and Dance. She serves as head of the M.F.A. Acting Program at The University of Texas at Austin, where she has taught since 2000. Prior to joining the faculty at UT, she taught drama courses at Princeton University, Georgetown University and the University of Maryland.
Dorn was the 2005 UT College of Fine Arts Award recipient for Excellence in Teaching, and has been honored with three awards from the prestigious Helen Hayes Awards Foundation.
A theatrical actress who specializes in Shakespearean roles, Dorn has been a member of the companies at the Yale Repertory Theatre, the American Conservatory Theatre in San Francisco and Arena Stage in Washington. Most recently she was cast in the touring company of the revival of “A Raisin in the Sun,” which played at the Guthrie Theatre in Minneapolis.
Senior Lecturer in Dance, Andrea Beckham oversees the Pilates-evolved Movement and Physical Conditioning Laboratory and serves on the Undergraduate Steering and Admissions Committee in addition to her instructional course load.
Her extraordinary excellence in teaching has been recognized by numerous prior awards. In 2004, she won the College of Fine Arts Teaching Excellence award followed by a Department of Theatre and Dance Teaching Excellence Award for the 2006 – 2007 academic year. She is the 2008 recipient of the Dad's Association Centennial Teaching Fellowship.
Beckham's choreography has been presented in Texas, New York, the Arts on the Hill Festival in Wyoming, the Avignon-Off Festival in France, the Cyprus International Festival, Taiwan, several small venues around Europe, including the Young! Tanzsommer tour in Austria. She has performed with Llory Wilson's Tallulah Dance Company in Seattle, New York, and Jacob's Pillow, Massachusetts, Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company in New York, and John Mead & Company in Tokyo, Japan.
The Board of Regents' Outstanding Teaching Awards program was established in August 2008 as the latest in a series of University of Texas System initiatives aimed at fostering innovative approaches to teaching, research and commercialization endeavors at all 15 University of Texas System institutions.
A list of honorees from throughout The University of Texas System and the institutions at which they teach is available at www.utexas.edu.