MELANIE GEORGE, Assistant Professor of Dance and Dance Education Program Coordinator, joined the Kent State University faculty in 2004. She received her BA in dance from Western Michigan University (WMU), where her research paper on the African-American contribution to late 19th and 20th century dance was included in WMU's dance history curriculum. She received her Master of Arts in dance and Graduate Certificate in Secondary Teaching from American University (AU). While attending AU, Ms. George served as liason to the Associate Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences and was awarded a Graduate Student Association Research Grant and the Multicultural Affairs Leadership Award. Professor George has an extensive teaching history including administrative and teaching positions with American University, Henry Ford Community College, The Roeper School for the Gifted and Talented and the Washington School of Ballet (home of the Washington Ballet). As a choreographer, her work is quite diverse, spanning many genres and including works in concert dance, theater, musical theater and voice. Her performance history includes Dance Nonce Dance Company, Boris Willis Moves, the first annual Detroit Electronic Music Festival and the CBS broadcast of the 2002 Kennedy Center Honors, among many others. Professor George's areas of research include minstrelsy, meta-cognition and the arts, and jazz dance history and pedagogy. In 2002 she was the Assistant Writer for Dance/USA's publication, chronicling the National College Choreography Initiative. In Fall 2006, she presented her research on jazz dance and improvisation at the International Conference on the Arts in Society in Edinburgh Scotland and at the annual conference of the National Dance Education Organization (NDEO). In May 2007 she traveled to Saskatchewan, Canada to present at the Crossing Boundaries conference on jazz dance pedagogy. Currently, she is a student in the Certified Movement Analyst (CMA) program at the Laban/Bartinieff Institute for Movement Studies in New York.