IC News

Department of Theatre and Dance

Paula Murray Cole (M.F.A. Southern Methodist University) teaches acting, voice, and movement. Her professional work is centered on the development and dissemination of Rasaboxes, a suite of exercises originally devised by Richard Schechner. She co-authored and edited the first book dedicated to the exercises, “Inside the Performance Workshop: A Sourcebook for Rasaboxes and Other Exercises” (Routledge 2023), and co-authored “The Actor As Athlete of the Emotions: The Rasaboxes Exercise” for the book “Movement For Actors (2nd Edition, 2017), edited by Nicole Potter, Barabara Adrian, and Mary Fleischer. She has taught performance workshops at New York University, the University of Tennessee at Knoxville, the Dell’ Arte International School of Physical Theatre, Brown University, and Rose Bruford College and has presented Rasaboxes at conferences and workshops in Israel, Montreal, Turkey, Singapore, China, and Poland.

Department of Theatre Studies

Chrystyna Dail (Ph.D. University of Maryland) serves as director of the Integrative Core Curriculum. Her area of specialization is theatre history, with research interests in U.S. social activist performance, labor theatre, 20th-century Ukrainian-American performance, and the representation of witches in performance. Her book, “Stage for Action: U.S. Social Activist Theatre in the 1940s,” is part of the Theater in the Americas series published through Southern Illinois University Press, and her chapter, “Driving Race Work: The UAW, Detroit, and Discrimination for Everybody!” is included in the edited collection “Working in the Wings: New Perspectives on Theatre History and Labor.” Additionally, her chapter on Margo Jones is included in the eight-volume book series The Great North American Stage Directors published through Methuen Drama. She is currently writing a book about theatrical stagings of the Salem witchcraft crisis by female-identifying artists, and is the book review editor of Theatre Survey, which is published through Cambridge University Press.

Department of Music Education

James Mick (Ph.D. Florida State University) teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in string pedagogy, orchestral rehearsal techniques, instrumental conducting, and the psychology of music teaching and learning. In 2020 he was honored with Ithaca College’s Faculty Excellence Award. Recent all-state orchestra appearances include Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, New York, Ohio, and Wyoming. Internationally, he has worked with student ensembles in the United Kingdom and Belgium. He served as music director and conductor of the Rochester Philharmonic Youth Orchestra from 2015 to 2023. During his tenure the RPYO held annual side-by-side performances with the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra at Eastman Theatre’s Kodak Hall and performed at Carnegie Hall in New York City and the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C. A popular clinician, he has presented at numerous state, regional, and national conferences including the American String Teachers Association National Conference and the Midwest Clinic: An International Band & Orchestra Conference.

Department of Music Performance

Michael Titlebaum (M.M. Eastman School of Music) is a saxophonist/composer/arranger who serves as Director of Jazz Studies at Ithaca College, where he directs the Ithaca College Jazz Ensemble; coaches combos; and teaches jazz saxophone and courses in jazz standards, arranging, repertoire, and pedagogy. In 2010 he founded the Ithaca College Jazz Ensemble Composition Contest. He also teaches and coordinates the jazz area in the IC Summer Music Academy. He is the author of the book “Jazz Improvisation Using Simple Melodic Embellishment,” published by Routledge/Taylor and Francis in 2021. He has performed and given workshops and lectures at numerous state and national conferences, including the Jazz Education Network, the International Society for Improvised Music, the New York State School Music Association, the New York State Band Directors Association, and the Texas Music Educators Association.

Department of Media Arts, Sciences, and Studies

Andrew Utterson (Ph.D. Birkbeck College) has expertly taught courses across the Screen Studies curriculum including Film Aesthetics and Analysis, Hollywood and American History, and Fiction Film Theory as well as ICC courses and mini-courses for the Finger Lakes Environmental Film Festival, of which he is now co-director. The focus of his scholarship in film history, theory, and criticism is the intersection between film and new media as well as the changing nature of cinema from production to exhibition.

Department of Management

Narges Kasiri (Ph.D. Oklahoma State University) bridges theory and practice in her courses in operations management and business analytics. She has integrated cutting-edge technology, including generative AI, into the curriculum. Her collaborative projects with local businesses allow students to apply their skills in real-world settings, enhancing both their learning experience and IC’s engagement in the community. As a scholar, she has earned prestigious honors such as the Fulbright Innovation Award and a grant from HSBC’s Sustainability Office.

Department of Music Education

Baruch Whitehead (Ph.D. Capella University) is the founding director of the Dorothy Cotton Jubilee Singers, which is dedicated to the preservation of the Negro Spiritual. He also founded the Orff-Schulwerk certification program, a music education that views music as a basic system like language, at Ithaca College and Marshall University, and is the past director of the annual Orff Certification Training Course at Boston University. His other areas of expertise include diversity in music education, gospel music and its preservation within mainstream musical settings, African American music, and the music of the Civil Rights movement. He has been a featured speaker/workshop presenter at many state, national, and international conferences, including the International Arts and Humanities conference in Honolulu and MENC, NYSSMA, NJMEA, and the American Orff-Schulwerk Association national conference. He has taught at the World Music Village in Helsinki, Finland, and continues to present workshops on diversity in music education for state, national, and international conferences.

Department of Music Performance

Daniel Coakwell (D.M.A. Texas Tech University) teaches in the Voice area of the department, and students and peers alike commend his commitment to promoting a learning environment that prioritizes the mental health and well-being of his students. He also enjoys guest teaching artist residencies at institutions such as El Teatro Teresa Carreño in Venezuela, Yale University, and Dartmouth College. He specializes in the Evangelist and tenor roles of J.S. Bach, and he frequently performs the composer’s major oratorios—St. Matthew Passion, St. John Passion, Christmas Oratorio, and Mass in B-Minor—as well as many of Bach’s cantatas. Recent performances as a tenor soloist include G.T. Handel’s Messiah at the Myerson Symphony Center in Dallas, TX, and at the Steinmetz Hall in Orlando, FL, and as tenor soloist of J.S. Bach’s Mass in B Minor at the Judson Memorial Church in New York City and at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Salem, OR.

Department of Writing

Jaime Warburton (M.F.A. Sarah Lawrence College) offers courses at every level of the Writing curriculum, with a focus on first-year writing, poetics, creative writing, and gender. Faculty and students point to her welcoming and passionate approach to instruction, noting that she teaches with humor and vivacity, and she empowers students to interrogate their biases and preconceptions. She is a prolific author of creative nonfiction, poetry, and scholarship on the craft of writing. Reviewers call her work “gorgeous,” “self-aware,” and “self-deprecating.” She has been a generous citizen of IC, directing the Writing Center and the Ithaca Young Writers Institute, and chairing the Faculty Handbook Amendment Committee, among numerous activities.