Associate Professor Alison Dobbins has been appointed the Faculty Excellence Advocate for the College of Arts & Letters.
Faculty Excellence Advocates are faculty members who are key drivers of faculty quality and diversity in each college across campus. They build close working relationships with their faculty colleagues, as well as department chairs and deans, to help their college meet MSU expectations concerning faculty search and hiring, faculty retention, faculty advancement, and to create a climate that promotes quality, inclusiveness, alignment, objectivity, consistency, and transparency of all academic human resource policies and practices.
Central to the College’s strategic priority of recruiting and retaining a world-class faculty, the Faculty Excellence Advocate is not aligned with any individual or group but rather is an independent advocate for the College values of equity, openness, and community.
“The College has identified equity as a core value that drives our efforts to demonstrate excellence in teaching, creative activity, research, and community engagement. The Faculty Excellence Advocate plays a critical role in elevating the quality of our work across the academic mission by supporting our shared commitment to equity,” said Christopher P. Long, Dean of the College of Arts & Letters. “Alison Dobbins has a proven record of advancing work of the highest quality through practices of inclusion. I am thrilled that she has agreed to serve as FEA in the College of Arts & Letters.”
Dobbins term as Faculty Excellence Advocate began on January 1, 2020, and will end December 31, 2020.
“I look forward to listening to the faculty, serving as a resource, and being a change agent for the College of Arts & Letters,” Dobbins said.
Alison Dobbins has a proven record of advancing work of the highest quality through practices of inclusion. I am thrilled that she has agreed to serve as FEA in the College of Arts & Letters.
Christopher P. Long, Dean of the College of Arts & Letters
An Associate Professor of Integrated Performance Media Design, Dobbins is a media designer focused on integrating elements of dance, media, music, theatre, and computer science in performance.
She is the project director and creator of Dance Engine and Shark! The Musical. Dance Engine isan interdisciplinary project focused on exploring audience engagement in dance through the use of mobile applications. Collaborators on this project are Charles Owen from MSU’s College of Engineering and Computer Science and Kori Wakamatsu from Brigham Young University. Shark! combines improv, narrative, and mobile applications to create an audience-generated musical performance. Collaborators include Alexis Bacon from MSU’s College of Music and Shondrika Moss-Bouldin from Rhodes College.
Dobbins received her M.F.A. in Digital Cinema from National University and her B.A. in Mathematics from Oberlin College.
