EdTA National Board Members Elected

Members of the Educational Theatre Association elected two board members in results announced at the annual meeting held Friday, September 15 at the EdTA National Conference.

For the two positions on the Board of Directors the winning candidates are Marti Fowler and Scott Walker.

Marti Fowler is from Chesterfield, Missouri. She has served on the Missouri Thespians board as secretary and conference chair and was a member of the Fine Arts Task Force with the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education that developed a fifth grade fine arts test and grade-level expectations. She developed Practical Technical Theatre, an instructional set of DVDs. She has sponsored three future educator scholarships.

She has been recognized in the past with an EdTA Standing Ovation Award and at the 2017 EdTA Annual Meeting was recognized with the EdTA President's Award, along with her husband, Bob Fowler, in appreciation for their exceptional contributions to the association, and to the field of school theatre.

Scott Walker is from Milwaukie, Oregon. A current member of the EdTA board of directors, he served one term as Oregon chapter director, three terms as an Oregon chapter board member, and is past president of the Oregon Theatre Educators Association. He has taught for 24 years at Milwaukie High School/Milwaukie Academy of the Arts, of which he was a founding member. He has also been recognized with the Melba Day Sparks Henning Memorial Award.

The three-year terms for these board members begin August 1, 2018.

In her "State of the Association" address at the annual meeting, Executive Director Julie Cohen Theobald underscored the hard work and dedication of chapter leaders as she highlighted the association's achievements over the last year. She reported that key Thespian membership numbers are at their highest levels ever in the history of the organization; Thespian inductions climbed to 46,317, and Junior Thespian inductions hit a record total of 7,017. There were a total of 4,707 troupes at the end of the 2016-17 school year, reflecting net growth of five percent.

Future board meetings will take place:

December 16, 2017 via conference call

February 16-18, 2018 in Cincinnati

April 14, 2018 via conference call

June 27, 2018 at International Thespian Festival

July 17-18, 2018 at EdTA Leadership Summit

September 15, 2018 at EdTA National Conference

About the Educational Theatre Association, home of the International Thespian Society

The Educational Theatre Association is an international association with approximately 125,000 active members. EdTA's mission is shaping lives through theatre education: honoring student achievement in theatre; supporting teachers by providing professional development, resources, and recognition; and influencing public opinion that theatre education is essential and builds life skills. EdTA is the home of the International Thespian Society, an honorary organization established at more than 4,700 schools, that has inducted more than 2.3 million theatre students since its founding in 1929. EdTA also produces the International Thespian Festival and publishes Dramatics magazine for high school theatre students, and Teaching Theatre, a journal for theatre education professionals.