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Creativity Symposium Extraordinary Success
Creativity: Worlds in the Making: A National Symposium was hosted by the Office of Entrepreneurship and Liberal Arts and the Program for Creativity and Innovation, March 18-20, 2009 on the Wake Forest University Campus. Throughout these three days, over 1,000 people engaged in discussion on the role creativity will play across all disciplines in the 21st Century. The symposium was organized by Lynn Book, Visiting Associate Professor of Theatre & Dance and Director of the Program for Creativity and Innovation. Professor Book won the 2009 Faculty Excellence in Entrepreneurship Award for Program Development for her extraordinary efforts in organizing the symposium.

Image Wake Forest University student involvement was an essential component to the symposium’s success, and students became involved in a number of ways, including a specially commissioned late-night performance by the Lilting Banshees, Wake Forest University’s seventeen-year-old student run improve comedy troupe. The student run Entrepreneurship Society presented “Entrepreneurship (ad)Ventures” throughout the day on Thursday in the Benson Center, showcasing the many entrepreneurial ventures run by Wake Forest students on campus. Also, student volunteers on the “C-Team” were an essential force in organizing the symposium’s activities.

The overall response to the symposium was outstanding. A conference attendee from a Mid-Western school sent the following note to Wake Forest University: “I am writing this note to congratulate you on the superb conference on Creativity at your institution. Your conference was truly outstanding in several ways: in your choice of keynotes and other presentations; in its dynamic structure of sessions in diverse, creative formats; and in the balance between performances and scholarship. I hope you will have many sequences to this conference, and will encourage my colleagues and doctoral students to attend it.”

Rebecca Kahane, Wake Forest University, Class of 2009, said, “As an aspiring director and performer, the creativity symposium opened up my eyes to new and innovative ways to explore theatre as an art form. Furthermore, many of the ideas seemed to liberate me from certain constraints I had been beginning to feel as an upcoming graduate.”

The symposium was made possible with the outstanding support of its many sponsors and partners, including the Piedmont Triad Research Park, the Wake Forest University Creativity Roundtable Group, Secrest Artists Series, Department of Theatre and Dance, Department of Art, Department of Biology, Department of Chemistry, Department of Physics, Department of Music, Interdisciplinary Honors Program, Film Studies Program, the Graduate School of Arts & Sciences, WFU School of Medicine, the Program for Bioethics, Health, and Society, the Provost’s Fund for Academic Excellence, the Fund for Ethics, Leadership, and Civic Responsibility, the Center for Design Innovation, the Piedmont Triad Partnership, and the Arts Council of Winston-Salem.

For more information on the symposium and its outcomes, visit: www.wfu.edu/creativity/symposium.htm.
 

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