Sandra Mathern-Smith, Associate Professor, has been performing and creating work since 1983. She has had an ongoing commitment to working collaboratively and, in the past six years, has delved more determinedly into improvisation as a performance form. Her concert-length works have incorporated slide and video-projected backdrops, live music, poetic text, and set designs. She has trained on and off in improvisation since 1981, seeing it as an essential part of contemporary dance training. Her work focuses on collaboration and improvisation, and interdisciplinary projects. Sandy has co-created several evening-length concerts, including a concert of solo works, She Moves in Circles Knowing, presented in Columbus in 1995; the six-part collaborative improvisational work Anatomy of Memory, presented around the United States in 1997. Habitats was produced and presented in Chicago, Columbus, and locally in Newark in 1999. Sandy received Individual Artist Fellowships in Choreography in l993 and 1996 from the Ohio Arts Council. Since 1983, she has been awarded over twenty grants for her work from the Ohio Arts Council, Arts Midwest, Greater Columbus Arts Council, Wisconsin Arts Board, and the Portland Oregon Arts Commission, among others.