Four dance students made a panel presentation in the Performing Arts Library on Friday as a part of the library’s colloquium series.

The presentation, “T.E.A.C.H. to Please: A Look at Dance and Higher Education from an Undergraduate Student Perspective,” focused on five core topics: to teach, engage, adapt, collaborate and help.

“The colloquium series is an opportunity for students, faculty, and even visiting scholars to present research here,” said Joe Clark, head of the Performing Arts Library. “It’s really ideal for students because students can present conference papers.”

The students, Ashley Lain, Marcia Custer, Brittany Tosatto and Shayna Fischer, will be delivering this panel presentation at this year’s National Dance Education Organization conference.

“We turned in a proposal last February to make a presentation at the conference,” said Lain, a sophomore dance education major. “We were accepted, so we put together a 50-minute panel presentation.”

The presentation examines ways in which dance educators can improve their teaching styles.

“The theme of the conference is the art and craft of teaching, so we took ‘teach’ and broke down the five letters,” Lain said.

“We have all had unique experiences in the dance program at Kent and have learned a lot in the process of creating this presentation,” Custer said at the beginning of the presentation.

The conference will be taking place next week in Miami.

“I think it’s going to be a really great experience,” Lain said. “Not only are we presenting for educators around the nation, but there are tons of networking opportunities for us and we can also go to presentations. I feel like we can learn a lot from this experience as a whole.”

Contact Taylor Rollins at [email protected].