BIMA Arts Faculty Evaluation – 2009

1. Please begin by offering a general evaluation of the success of your arts major this summer.

This year’s program was one of the strongest yet.

We finally achieved complete integration of the
vocal and instrumental majors, and students had
an extremely diverse set of activities. They were
able to produce work far beyond the expected level
we would assume based on their experience.

2. What issues or problems arose that you feel need special consideration and/or preparation for
next summer?
I feel that there was too much time spent in the
majors-some days in excess of seven hours.
Not only was it draining and counter
productive for the students, the faculty had
very little time to work on their own artwork,
3. What, if any changes would you want to incorporate in the curriculum? None, other
than the above concerns

4. Please provide an evaluation of the collaboration with your intern and other faculty in your major
(if applicable) - both the preparation before the summer and the teaching during the summer.
`I did not work with an intern, but the
collaboration between the music faculty was very
effective. Clearly the rapport we have developed
over the years has helped tremendously, but our
daily lunch meetings and nightly email exchanges
kept us on track.

5. Were you satisfied with the nature of the process and the production of the arts festival
performance/exhibit for your arts major?
Yes
6. Was the combination of morning and afternoon/evening arts major time appropriate?
No- too much time
 7. How could the BIMA administrative staff have been more helpful in assisting the
implementation of your arts major? No need for suggestions here,
they did a fine job

8. Please comment on the support and feedback you received while planning for the arts major as
well as throughout the summer. Please comment on the role Rachel played in the process and
suggestions you may have.
Feedback was appropriate and
helpful, and Rachel was on top of things.
9. Please comment on your involvement in the BIMA/Genesis community outside of your arts
major. (Including, perhaps, but not limited to: faculty learning, Shabbat, facilitating or assisting in
other programs, offering optional activities and suggestions you may have for future
collaboration.) The
involvement was pleasant, and
Shabbat was the main time to interact with
Genesis faculty.

10. Do you have any suggestions regarding the preparation of the arts faculty before the summer?
No

11.Do you have suggestions for the admissions process or recruitment strategies that would
help us recruit and accept high quality artists and musicians? This
year we got a nice
selection of recordings and videos of student work-
let’s get it up on the website in a special recruitment
pages section. I have spoken to Bradley and Danny at
length about this-we need to be actively recruiting. I
think that offering various Jewish Arts residencies in
various communities is the best way to spread the
word. There is a shortage of high quality
programming modeling an integration of Jewish
Studies and the Arts, and BIMA should take a
leadership role in this area. By offering
concerts/exhibits, combined with student workshops
and staff development training we could come up with
a recruitment model that could be self sustaining-
there is money available from Jewish education
funders to subsidize highly effective programming,
and this should be a major area of concentration for
us