Marilyn Berrett has been appointed as the new chair for the Department of Dance in the College of Fine Arts and Communications at Brigham Young University.
“I love the students who come to BYU,” Barrett said. “They are eager, they are hard working. It’s been such a joy to be a teacher, and to teach people how to become teachers.”
She replaces Lee Wakefield, who has been chair for the past 11 years and who will return to full-time teaching and coaching as artistic director of the Ballroom Dance Company.
A member of the BYU dance faculty for 25 years, Berrett received a bachelor’s degree in dance performance from the University of Utah in 1979 and a master’s degree in dance at BYU in 1984. In 1985, she became a BYU dance faculty member and the director of The Dancers’ Company, now Contemporary Dance Theatre, in 1988.
In 2002, Berrett founded Kinnect, an educational outreach program where BYU students teach the creative dance process in public schools.
Her scholarship and research work has focused primarily on dance education, curriculum development and choreography. Berrett has taught both lecture and studio courses in dance history and philosophy, modern dance, pedagogy, composition and improvisation.
For more information, contact the Department of Dance at (801) 422-5086.
