Xavier Pierce is an highly respected acclaimed lighting designer whose work spans Broadway, Off-Broadway, regional theatre, opera, and dance. His designs have been seen at leading institutions across America including the Public Theater, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Guthrie Theater, Steppenwolf Theatre ,Chicago Shakespeare Theatre, The Goodman Theatre ArenaStage, Seattle Repertory Theatre ,American Conservatory Theatre , American Repertory, the Alley Theatre.

Marcus Denard Johnson serves as the Director of the FSU/Asolo Conservatory.  He is a 2008 graduate of the Conservatory and has since worked consistently in Theatre as a theatre administrator, actor, and director. For Johnson's full bio, please visit the School of Theatre's website.

William Whitener performed worldwide and on Broadway with The Joffrey Ballet, Twyla Tharp Dance, Bob Fosse’s Dancin’, New York City Opera and Martha Clarke’s Garden of Earthly Delights. He choreographed over sixty dances for Boston Ballet, Pacific Northwest Ballet, Kansas City Ballet, the Royal Winnipeg Ballet, Les Ballets Jazz de Montreal, Ballet Hispanico, Seattle Repertory Theater, Seattle Opera and John Curry’s Ice Theatre. For Williams's full bio, please visit the School of Dance website.

My research focuses on ways to convey the value of design to exceed the expectations of both clients and users. My goals are to develop more projects involving design entrepreneurship and the gamification of services.

My research is rooted in the interconnections of American contemporary performance, cultural and personal histories. I approach performance as a means of re-framing perspectives, creative practice, linking the arts and social change, and blurring the lines between performer and audience. I draw inspiration from my upbringing to create original works that allow for moments of recognition and transformation. 

I examine utopia, nation-building, and the archive within the expanded field of painting. I rely on elements of print media, cinema, design history, surrealism, and folklore to evoke parallel universes, investigating the disconnect between past projected futures and reality through altered and imagined space. My interest in post-communist perception and the politics of memory lends itself to ambiguous images and hypnotic, dreamlike compositions that oscillate between flatness and true representation, further emphasizing a silent but steady descent into entropy and euphoria.

My work is investigating voice-training methodologies through the lens of linguistics.  My research focuses on how voice trainers conceptualize theoretical aspects of voice and speech, which influence the way they practice and teach the subject in the classroom and how coaching practices happen in the industry. 

I study the role of arts organizations in contemporary public and civic life. I am especially interested in how that role is changing, how the arts interact with local communities, and the strategies these organizations use to navigate challenging and shifting expectations.

My creative activities include direction, choreography and performance in the entertainment industry. I also research depictions of violence in theatre and the ways in which movement is captured on camera.

My research explores early childhood and intergenerational art education, community-based, museum and out-of-school art education, postdevelopmental and critical childhood studies, digital media and visual culture in childhood, and motherscholarship and feminist pedagogies.