Kean University’s 2008 Teacher of the Year

E. Teresa Choate, M.A., M.F.A., PhD.
Department of Theatre

On May 14, the Kean University Alumni Association presented the 2008 Teacher of the Year Award to Dr. E. Teresa Choate, Associate Professor in the School of Visual and Performing Arts, Department of Theatre. 

Dr. Choate has been teaching undergraduate students for thirty years, eleven of them here at Kean.  She teaches theatre history, performance theory, dramaturgy, script analysis, and dramatic literature (or the “scary classes,” as her students call them), as well as period styles of acting.  She is a third generation educator, as her paternal grandmother taught in a one room school house in rural Kentucky at the turn of the 20th century.  She still has the bell her grandmother used to call in the children.  Her father was a university professor of religion and philosophy and the reason she entered the profession.

Dr. Choate’s recent publications include reviews in Theatre Journal of Elliot Goldenthal’s and Julie Taymor’s opera, Grendel: Transcendence of the Great Big Bad, and Tom Stoppard’s Coast of Utopia.  In addition, she has directed numerous productions, including Gorky’s Summerfolk (a Los Angeles Times  “Pick-of-the-Week”), Oedipus the King (on a full scale reproduction of the Parthenon), Murder in the Cathedral (in a real cathedral), and the holocaust drama, Playing for Time at Kean University.  Most recently she directed Othello, Urinetown, and Servant of Two Masters at Kean University.  She is an Associate Member of the Society of Stage Directors and Choreographers and is the National President of Alpha Psi Omega, the National Honor Theatre Society.  Dr. Choate earned her degrees from Denver University, Catholic University, and University of California, Los Angeles.