Leadership Spotlights 2013

Liz Greeban

Teacher on Special Assignment, UC Irvine Artsbridge
School of Education

July 1, 2013

“I am most inspired and engaged when working with children.”

Liz Greeban recently joined the UC Irvine School of Education as a Teacher of Special Programs.

Starting in winter quarter 2013, Liz has been assisting ArtsBridge America Co-Director Kim Burge in bringing ArtsBridge back to UCI after a hiatus of several years. This fresh start for the ArtsBridge program was made possible by a generous grant by the Hurvis Charitable Foundation. Liane Brouillette, Principal Investigator on the new ArtsBridge grant, says that she could not be more impressed with Liz’s work.

Under Liz’s guidance, UCI undergraduates provide standards-based arts and literacy instruction to elementary level students who would not otherwise have access to high quality arts instruction. This academic year, Liz and the UCI students she is mentoring are working with K-3 children in the after-school programs at the Orange County Children’s Therapeutic Arts Center and the Santa Ana Police Athletic & Activity League. Next year, the ArtsBridge program plans to expand to also offer integrated arts-and-literacy lessons in local elementary schools. This research-based curriculum utilizes creative drama and dance as vehicles for boosting literacy skills.

When Liz originally came to UC Irvine in 2001, her goal was to complete her bachelor’s degree in Film and Media studies, with a Russian minor. During her undergraduate years Liz actively pursued artistic studies in dance and choir, performed in the UCI Madrigal Dinner, and acted in student films. Upon graduating, Liz completed internships with Time Warner Cable and World Wide Motion Picture Corporation before realizing that it was when she was working with children that she felt most inspired and engaged.

Since 2005 Liz as been teaching art, drama, and academic classes privately as well as through after school programs and summer camps with Camp Fire USA, the Jewish Community Center of Orange County (JCCOC), and the Acting Academy for Kids.

Liz came back to UCI in 2010 and by 2013 had received both her multiple subject teaching credential and a Master of Arts in Teaching. It was when she subsequently decided to complete coursework for a single subject teaching credential in art that she met Dr. Kim Burge. As Director of Educational Outreach for the UCI Center for Learning in the Arts, Sciences and Sustainability, Dr. Burge introduced Liz to the ArtsBridge program. Liz’s passion for both teaching and the arts made her a natural candidate to work with undergraduates who shared her enthusiasm for making the arts available to all children.

A life–long lover of the arts, Liz continues to develop her own artistic skills through dance, voice, art, and theater. In 2010, she performed as an Irvine Valley College guest artist in the California Conservatory of Dance production of Sleeping Beauty. She keeps a studio space for her own art work in Laguna Beach. Liz also teaches art classes through Art Smart Studio & Gallery in old town Tustin.

Since her undergraduate days, Liz has been active in both the UC Irvine Alumni Choir and UCI/IVC combined classical guitar ensemble. To condition her body as a vehicle for her arts endeavors and achieve balance in her life, Liz begins and ends her day with yoga and meditation. She currently is working with Clair Trevor School of the Arts to design the curriculum for UCI’s first musical theater summer intensive for junior high students, which she will teach in July of 2013.

Liz plans to continue to work with ArtsBridge as it expands, spreading the arts and literacy to K-12 students across the nation.

Lesson plans and streaming videos containing the curriculum used in the ArtsBridge K-2 arts-and-literacy program are available on-line at http://www.clat.uci.edu/lessons

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