Irvine, Calif., February 1, 2008

Liane Brouillette (Ph.D., University of Colorado; B.A., Rice University) serves as Director of the UCI Center for Learning through the Arts and Technology. The Center recently won an $828,000 grant from the California Postsecondary Education Commission to help improve K-2 teachers' skills in teaching visual arts, drama, and dance education. This program, carried out in partnership with the San Diego Unified School District, will enable 60 K-2 teachers in high-poverty schools to 1) attend workshops that assist them in integrating the arts into their teaching and 2) co-teach 27 lessons with a Teaching Artist in their classroom.

In California, it is the responsibility of classroom teachers to provide arts instruction to students at the elementary level. However, many teachers lack experience in the visual and performing arts. The new program, entitled "ArtsCore: K-2", will work with teachers in 15 diverse schools, serving 7,000 kindergarten-through-second-grade students during the four years of the program. A major focus will be on helping teachers to implement arts-based teaching techniques that enhance the literacy skills of English language learners.

This program builds upon a 2005-06 pilot project carried out in Orange County and the 2001-04 ArtCore project (co-directed by Kim Burge). which focused on integrating the arts and the language arts at the high school level. The ArtsCore: K-2 project also integrates findings from a $250,000 National Geographic project, entitled "Mapping the Beat", for which Dr. Brouillette serves as PI. This project uses regional and historical music to enhance the understanding of students in U.S. history classes. The Mapping the Beat program--together with the Mapping the Arts program funded by a $60,000 Dana Foundation grant--brings together research partners from UCLA, Michigan State, Oklahoma State, Cal State Long Beach, and Lawrence University in Wisconsin.

Dr. Brouillette came to UCI in 1998, from the University of Houston, where she had served as director of the doctoral program in cultural studies within the Department of Education and Cultural Studies. During her early years at UCI, her research focused primarily on issues in educational leadership. Her books include "A Geology of School Reform" (1996, SUNY Press) and "Charter Schools: Lessons in School Reform" (Lawrence Erlbaum, 2002). A book on school-community relations (Sage) is expected out this year.

In a sense, Dr. Brouillette¹s current work with the arts and geography brings her career full circle. Having begun her career as an English teacher in a German high school (Gymnasium), she has long been intrigued by the ways in which culture shapes perception. Before receiving her Ph.D. in education, she worked with the Colorado Shakespeare Festival at the University of Colorado. On her arrival at UCI, Dr. Brouillette began working with Jill Beck, then Dean of the School of the Arts, on research and evaluation for the ArtsBridge project. (A 2001 article by Dr. Brouillette that appeared in "The Chronical of Higher Education" can be viewed at http://repositories.cdlib.org/clta/artsbridge/20010223LB/.)

Now a national network of partnerships between university arts programs and K-12 schools, ArtsBridge began at UCI and had expanded across the UC System when a FIPSE grant from the U.S. Dept. of Education enabled the program to expand into a national network of 22 universities Following the 2001 Sciences for the Arts conference, which brought together scholars and researchers from a wide range of disciplines, a decision was made to create a campus-wide research center that would study the nexus of relationships between arts education, aspects of cognitive and social development, and public policy formation. The Center, originally called The da Vinci Center, was founded that year.

When Jill Beck left UCI to become President of Lawrence University, Dr. Brouillette became her successor as Director of the UCI Center for Learning through the Arts. Since the Center also serves as the research center for the ArtsBridge America network, the use of technology--for communication, teaching, recording performances, and as a means of artistic expression--has become increasingly central to the Center's mission. Therefore, when the Center was renewed by the University in 2007, its name was officially changed to the UCI Center for Learning through the Arts and Technology. The 2008 issue of the Journal for Learning through the Arts, for which Dr. Brouillette serves as co-managing editor (with Bobbi McKean of the University of Arizona), will be a special issue on the digital arts.