HWS News
8 August 2024 • Faculty Davenport Earns DEI Leadership Award By Andrew Wickenden '09
The National Dance Education Organization honors Professor of Dance and Movement Studies Donna Davenport for her outstanding work on diversity, equity and inclusion.
In September, the National Dance Education Organization (NDEO) will present Professor of Dance and Movement Studies Donna Davenport with the Outstanding Leadership Award for DEI.
The annual award recognizes individuals who have demonstrated excellence in creating ideas for programs, curriculums or projects that have a significant impact in diversity, equity and inclusion within dance education. Recipients are recognized for their leadership on a local, state, regional, national or international levels, as well as the impact of their leadership in inspiring others.
Associate Professor of Educational Studies Mary Kelly, who recommended Davenport for the award, noted: “What I appreciate about Donna is that she also walks the talk, and that she knows that to be involved in social justice work is to also be constantly learning and to be engaged in dialogue with others. She advocates to students to do the hard work of learning about the world around them and to finding a way to make a difference through their own practice, and even though she has been engaged in transformative work for decades, she models the importance of always learning through her own participation in educational opportunities.”
“A hallmark of Donna's impressive career is her ability to lead and inspire others by role modeling inclusion and creativity in dance education,” wrote Katie Flowers, director of the Center for Community Engagement and Service-Learning, who cited Davenport’s leadership and the “ripple effect of positivity and inspiration” it has fostered.
Davenport says she sees her academic endeavors “as a merging of artistic, political and intellectual projects, discoveries that are both aesthetic and scholarly, depending on the context and the medium. My work as a choreographer, activist and educator outside HWS Colleges is essential to my work inside the institution.”
A performer, writer and choreographer, Davenport received her Doctor and Master of Education from Temple University and undergraduate degrees in dance and psychology from UMASS-Amherst. At HWS she has served four times as Chair of the Dance Department, coordinated Social Justice Studies for 10 years, co-directed the former Arts and Education Program, and joined the new Gender, Sexuality, and Intersectional Justice (GSIJ) Department. She has also served as Associate Dean of Faculty at HWS and volunteered as Dean of Faculty for St. Peter's Community Arts Academy in Geneva, receiving the 2023 community award for Extraordinary Support for Music and the Arts. She held the John Milton Potter Endowed Professorship from 2013 to 2018 and was honored to be HWS’ 2016 Civically Engaged Faculty Member of the Year. A certified Hatha Yoga instructor, Davenport has been increasingly engaged in conversations about inclusive pedagogy and decolonized curriculum, which has refocused her scholarship and research around mindfulness, anti-racism, and embodied activism. With NDEO, she is a frequent conference presenter; co-chair of the Dance 2050 think tank; the first Book Review Editor for the Journal of Dance Education and a founding member of its Editorial Board. This fall, Davenport is a Fisher Center Faculty Research Fellow teaching The Mindful Body (FSEM), Body & Self (introduction to dance), and Community Arts: Activism Embodied.
NDEO is a non-profit organization that supports dance educators in every setting and genre.
This fall, Davenport will join the other winners of the NDEO annual awards on a panel, “Empowering Excellence in Dance Education,” at the national conference in Washington.
