SOAC shares arts with PLU

School of Arts and Communication gives week of events to small crowds

Kari Plog - plogkr@plu.edu

mast news reporter

This week marked the annual School of Arts and Communication Week for students here at PLU, which is a student-run and student-coordinated event put on by the School of Arts and Communication. As an effort to showcase what the communication and art students have been working on this past year, the week was planned to present various forms of performances, workshops and keynote events to bring the campus to life with the arts.

“This is intended as a celebration of the arts and communication on our campus,” said Edward Inch, Dean of the School of Arts and Communication.

“It is a chance for people to come together out of their individual classrooms and share what they are doing with other students and faculty members,” Inch continued.

This week was a collaborated effort involving students and faculty members. The SOAC planning committee co-chairs were seniors Sabrina Coady, Breanne Coats and Allie Moore.

“Participating in SOAC Week is an opportunity for students to take the theories and components from the classroom and apply them to real world professional experience,” Coady said. “(It’s) also a great time for students to network with and gain knowledge from professionals in the field or industry they are interested in.”

The list of events ranged in discipline from music and dance, to art and media. A laundry list of keynote speakers also attended, lecturing on their specific area of study. This was an attempt to not only bring what these students are learning outside of the classroom, but also an attempt to connect students on campus to the larger community through the disciplines of communication and the arts.

“Education is more than what happens in the four walls of a classroom. It is also our ability to see relationship and connection,” Inch said. “By attending events from other disciplines and fields and by exploring some of the creative energies of the school, people can get a sense of how they might connect or engage their education and their world in different and unique ways.”

One example of a SOAC event was the theatrical segment “Shakespeare in Red Square,” which was held on Tuesday in front of Eastvold Chapel at 12:30 p.m. This was an event put on by select students in the Theater Department performing monologues and other short performances written by William Shakespeare. It was one of the smaller events as far as turnout, but it was one of the many theatrical elements during SOAC week.

“I suspect that there are some events that have low turn-out,” said Inch of the speculation regarding turnout rates at certain events. “I think it depends. For instance, I generally expect that lectures will be less attended than, say, a silk screening which is more interactive.”

Towards the beginning of the week, some speculation arose as to whether or not these events were being attended by the amount of students previously anticipated.

“Different events have different turn-out rates,” Inch said. “The ones I have been to have been well-attended. One speaker had about 15 or 20 (people) in the audience, which seemed reasonable to me.”

Coordinators were hoping for a more strict approach from professors in requiring attendance by their students, especially those in the disciplines of theater and communication.

“We’ve had a lot of great events and many people have attended them. I was disappointed in a couple of the events having a low turnout because of all the time various students, faculty and staff have spent on these events,” Coats said. “We were hoping more professors would make it a requirement to attend some of these events and that more students would take advantage of the free opportunities being provided to them.”

Overall, the anticipation of success was met with great satisfaction, according to Coats.

“We don’t want people to think this isn’t a successful week of events because overall this week has been the best SOAC Week I’ve participated in,” Coats said. She has been a chair and co-chair in previous years.

This week was a very important week for students, both in the field of communication and the arts as well as those that are studying different disciplines. SOAC events provided an opportunity for interactive study, applying concepts studied in the classroom to real professionally-designed activities.

“My favorite part about these events is the fact that there are a diverse range of opportunities going on from educational and experimental to fun and interactive,” Moore said. “I enjoy that students can step out of their comfort zone and partake in different realms of our school.”

Photo by Chris Hunt

The D.A.S.H. Center dance team “Reality Check” entertains after a SOAC Week Media Lab documentary screening April 9 in the Mary Baker Russel Music Center. The D.A.S.H. Center is a Tacoma-based organization that reaches out to the local community, providing them with the tools they need for artistic expression.

Photo by Chris Hunt

April 1, L.E.A.D. Art club presented the Community Story Tree in Ingram. The tree was made of many individual pieces, that together symbolize regrowth and healing

Photo by Chris Hunt

Students make shirts by screen printing. This was both the start and end area of PLU’s Art Walk April 7. The student-led tours went around PLU and showcased different types of art at different stations including screen printing shirts and raku firing by assistant art professor Spencer Ebbinga.