Penn State Harrisburg Faculty Details
Vita
Katie Robinson serves as the Director of the School of Humanities and Professor of Theatre and Humanities. She joined Penn State Harrisburg, Penn State's interdisciplinary college, in July, 2003, after serving as Dean of Arts and Letters at Northeastern State University and Southern Oregon University, and as Director of the School of Performing Arts at Louisiana Tech University.
With credentials in theatre and arts administration, she has fostered diversity and internationalism throughout her career by promoting exploration of these issues through the arts, travel, and service learning. An active advocate, she has served on several boards and committees that foster accessibility to the arts and humanities for the general public and especially for culturally deprived areas and constituencies.
Within the creative side of theatre, acting and directing are her specialties. She has demonstrated her expertise in over 100 productions at the campus, regional and national levels. Among her most prized honors is the Kennedy Center Award of Excellence for portraying Martha in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? for the American College Theatre Festival. She enlisted in the project after strong encouragement from Uta Hagen, who originated the role.
She has been active in professional organizations including the Kennedy Center's American College Theater Festival, the American Theatre Association, the Association for Theatre in Higher Education, and the Southwest Theatre Association. Her connection to KC/ACTF began in the organization's inaugural year when she participated as a student actor and has continued through her service as National Chair and beyond. She served the organization as an officer at the state, regional and national levels. Included are hosting the Irene Ryan Acting Winners Circle Evening of Scenes five times at the Kennedy Center and eleven times for Region IV. As National Chair, she traveled extensively throughout the U.S. and Europe in support of excellence in theatre arts in higher education.
In 1996 with Jeff Koep she co-founded the National Partners of the American Theatre, an organization that serves the educational theatre process through scholarships, consultant support, and diversity activities. She was named Distinguished Partner and Board Member for Life in 2003.
For the Southwest Theatre Association she served as Treasurer, Executive Board member, Louisiana Board Representative, and Auditions Coordinator. In 1991 she was elected to the College of Fellows of the Southwest Theatre Association. She has also served as an active board member of the American Theatre Association, founding member of ATHE, board member of International Theatre Institute/US, and President of Theatres of Louisiana.
Education
- Ph.D., Texas Tech University (Theatre and Fine Arts Administration)
- M.F.A., Southern Illinois University (Acting and Directing)
- Certification, Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts (Acting)
- B.A., Louisiana Tech University (Speech and Theatre)
Research Areas/Creative Interests
- Acting
- Directing
- Arts Management
- New Play Development
- Diversity/International Education
- Service Learning
Professional Affiliations
- Kennedy Center/American College Theater Festival
- National Partners of the American Theatre
- Association for Theatre in Higher Education
- Southwest Theatre Association
- Fort Hunter Museum Board of Directors
- Leadership Harrisburg
- United States Institute for Theatre Technology
- American Studies Association
- International Council of Fine Arts Deans
- Modern Language Association
College News
Web site profiles American emigration to Liberia
Building on years of research and two published books, a Penn State Harrisburg faculty member has created a web site dedicated to profiling the historic African American emigration to Liberia.
Associate Professor of Communications and Humanities C. Patrick Burrowes unveiled his interactive web site entitled “Like a Motherless Child: African American Emigrants to Liberia, 1820-1904” as part of a presentation to faculty, staff, and students recently in the Gallery Lounge. Taken from the title of the well-known spiritual, “Like a motherless child expresses the overriding feeling of dispossession and alienation felt by the emigrants,” Burrowes says. Many of them former slaves, “they had no mother and they had no homeland,” he adds.
‘Little Shop of Horrors’ comes to campus Nov. 12 to 15
Little Shop of Horrors, with its man-eating plant Audrey II and toe-tapping music, comes to Penn State Harrisburg’s Olmsted Auditorium for a four-day run November 12 through 15.
Presented by the college’s Capital Players with a cast and crew of 24 undergraduate and graduate students, Little Shop of Horrors takes to the stage at 8 p.m. November 12, 13, and 14 with a 2 p.m. matinee November 15.
Heard on campus – Franklin and the Junto
Penn State Harrisburg faculty member and Benjamin Franklin scholar George Boudreau terms his recent discovery of a long-lost poem written in 1732 as “one of the greatest finds of my career.”
An associate professor of humanities and history, Boudreau’s research interests focus on Franklin and his philosophical organization called the Junto and the role it played in the cultural transformation of Philadelphia in the 1700s. Boudreau recently related his research findings during a Gallery Lounge presentation hosted by the offices of Academic Affairs and Research and Graduate Studies.