Rick Southerland is a leader educator, artist, and advocate of dance/movement, the oldest of all art forms
and initial point for action of all of human expression. His career spans more than 30 years in all-
ages dance/movement with specializations in dance/movement making and performance,
culturally relative arts infusion integration, and entrepreneurial orientation of learners of
dance/movement. A state certified P12 educator, he teaches/has taught in urban centers in NC,
MD, DC, GA, and NV. Rick was adjunct faculty in the dance programs at East Carolina University
and the University of Nevada, Reno. While in Reno, he was the Arts Education Director at the
Sierra Arts Foundation where he hired, trained, and placed teaching artists in the public schools.
Rick also developed and implemented curriculum that was embedded with sustainable
pedagogies of the Arts Infusion Project, a 3-year professional development program for Title I
elementary and middle school non-arts teachers in the Washoe County School System to create
and deliver standards-based arts infusion integration lessons for their learners that was funded
by a $1,000,000 US Department of Education grant. Rick was Associate Professor of Dance
Education at Goucher College where he oversaw dance education certification track, in addition
to training students in modern dance and dance making, short immersion study abroad courses
carrying students to Ghana, Togo, Benin and South Africa. He also taught for the Master of Arts
program. His creative and scholarly publications have been presented at home and abroad.
Leadership service included faculty advisor for various student organizations, Academic Honor
Board faculty representative, dance program Artistic Director, program Music Director
overseeing accompanists, modern dance residencies director, dance program coordinator, Phi
Beta Kappa arts awards coordinator, Faculty Secretary, Faculty Affairs Committee Chair, Faculty
Executive Counsel, Faculty Member At-Large, Board of Trustees Arts Faculty Representative, ad
Academic Center Director for Writing, Arts, and Media. Rick also served as an elected board
member of the National Dance Education Organization as Director of Contributions and
Endowments, Recording Secretary, and President. As a consultant, he served as a writer for the
Dance Entry Level Teacher’s Assessment, external reviewer of higher education dance program
for accreditation, and external adjudicator of individuals under review for promotion and tenure.
Most recently Rick taught for the University of Maryland, Baltimore County’s Master of Arts in
Teaching program. Currently taking a hiatus working full-time in higher education, Rick is a P8
dance resource teacher at Bay Brook Elementary Middle School in the Baltimore City Public
Schools and is an Advisory Director for the Doris Humphrey Foundation for Dance. Rick was
awarded a BFA from East Carolina University ’94, Project ACT ’00 (Alternative Certification for
Teachers graduate level program: a precursor of current MAT programs), MA in Performing Arts:
Dance from The American University ’01, and MFA from the Hollins University/American Dance
Festival ’08.