CCCPE Educators of the Year Nomination Form – 2013-2014
Your Name: Tony Lipold
Institution: Saddleback College
Phone: 949-582-4645
Candidate’s Name: Deidre Cavazzi
Phone: 949-582-4642
Date: January 27, 2014
E-mail: tlipold@saddleback.edu
Institution: Saddleback College
E-mail: davazzi@saddleback.edu
Application Instructions: Please use this application to nominate individuals that you feel are deserving of this
award in any of the categories listed below. You may copy this application to accommodate all of your
nominees. Please email completed applications to: BelyeaL@crc.losrios.edu
Application Deadline: February 14, 2014
Nomination Criteria: All nominations must be made by a current CCCPE member. Candidates for the award
do not have to be CCCPE members and can be eligible in any one of the categories listed below. Eligible
candidates can be either full or part-time faculty with at least five years experience at the community college
level (experience may be at more than one institutions). Please be sure you nominate faculty for the educator
awards, administrators for the administrative award, and staff for the staff award.
Areas of Nomination (select the one that best applies)
__X__ Dance Educator
_____ Fitness/Exercise Physiology Instructor
_____ Health Educator
_____ Physical Education Administrator
_____ Adaptive Physical Educator
_____ Physical Education Staff Member
_____ General Physical Educator
Accomplishments (Please list or write under each heading the appropriate response)
 Program Development: The classes Deidre teaches include modern dance, ballet, choreography, yoga,
Pilates, exercise for dancers, and dance history (both on campus and online). She created the
curriculum for our online dance history class, and she also has written new courses including
Multicultural Dance in the United States and Yoga Philosophy (both will launch next year).
Deidre is also in the process to design and teach the new Yoga Certification Skills Award that we
will start in fall 2014. Deidre also choreographs two pieces for our Winter Dance Concert held in
November each year.

Exemplary Teaching: Deidre initiated our college’s involvement in the American College Dance
Festival in 2008, and each year she works from August through April with an auditioned group of
our dance students to prepare and rehearse choreography to take to the festival and be
adjudicated. This is an amazing opportunity for our students, as it allows them exposure to
faculty and students from university dance programs (which many of them then transfer into),
professional dance companies, new genres of dance classes, and the chance to interact with their
peers from other colleges and university dance programs. We had been one of the only
community colleges who were not involved, and it has been a great way to include Saddleback in
the dance community, which is especially helpful for the universities present to see our dancers
who may be transferring, and has increased respect for our program! In 2008, she completed
ASG grant applications and met with the associated student governing board to gain funding for
this program, and I am very grateful that our division has continued to keep this in the budget
each year.
Awards Received/Noteworthy Accomplishments in their field (Please list): Here are some of her
awards/honors-- I listed an assortment from teaching and academia:
Saddleback College Faculty Research/Travel Grants (2008 – 2013)
Co-Chair, National Dance and Culture Area of the Popular Culture/American Culture Association (2009
- present)
California Alliance for Art Education, City of Mission Viejo Representative (2008)
Society of Dance History Scholars Graduate Student Grant Award (2006)
Leo Freedman Fellowship (2005-2006)
UC Irvine School of the Arts Graduate Student Research Grant (2005 and 2006)
UC Irvine Full Teaching Assistant Fellowship (2004 – 2006)
Irvine Public Schools Foundation, Recognition for Innovation in Teaching Award (2004)
Disney Teacher Award, Nomination (2003)
Phi Beta Kappa Honor Society (1997)
UC Irvine UROP Grant for Art History Research (1996-1997)
Santa Ana Unified School District Arts Bridge Scholar-in-Residence (1995-1998)
UC Irvine Campus wide Honors (1993-1997)
National Merit Scholarship (1993-1997)
UC Regents Scholarship (1993-1997)
City of Modesto’s Young Woman of the Year (1992)


Professional Affiliations (Please list): Deidre is a member of the Intersegmental Dance
Curriculum Committee, and meets with college/university dance colleagues to discuss dance
curriculum and the impact of state changes (they usually have a SoCal fall meeting, and then hold
a meeting in spring at the American College Dance Festival).
Deidre serves as the national co-chair for the Dance and Cultural area of the Popular
Culture/American Culture Association, and give papers annually, representing Saddleback
College, at the national conference. This is an excellent opportunity for her to dialogue with other
dance history educators around the country and keeps her scholarship current.

Community Service: Deidre serves on the Cultural Arts committee for the city of Mission Viejo,
and works with other members of the committee to support/assist with festivals, opportunities,
events, and awareness, for the arts in our city.

Deidre has knit over 150 hats for chemotherapy patients at the Women’s Wellness Center in
Mission Hospital

Deidre has also been a guest yoga teacher for workshops and conferences including the Jane
Goodall California Youth Leadership Summit, the Ocean Institute, Prescott College’s Expressive
Arts Therapy Summer Intensive, and three times at the Great Teachers Seminar with Saddleback
College!

Publications: Deidre has presented papers at the National Popular Culture/American Culture Association
conference, the Society of Dance History Scholars international conference, the Dance Under
Construction conference, and the International Federation for Theatre Research conference. She has
also served as the national co-chair of the Dance and Culture Area of the Popular Culture/American
Culture Association since 2009. I've listed some of her recent papers below:
Popular Culture Association National Conference, Washington, DC (April 2013)
“Fierce and Fluid: Examining the Role of Fight Choreography in Film”
Popular Culture Association National Conference, Boston, MA (April 2012)
“Reclaiming the Body: Building Community through Dance Theatre and Expressive Art Therapy”
Society of Dance History Scholars Conference, Toronto, Canada (June 2011)
“Cabaret, Community, and Conflict: Three Artists’ Movements in Switzerland during WWI and
WWII”
Popular Culture Association National Conference, San Antonio, TX (April 2011)
“Mechanized Fantasies: Steampunk Bodies from Romantic Ballet to American Tribal Belly Dance”
Popular Culture Association National Conference, St Louis, MO (March 2010)
“A New Home for Artists: The Role of Switzerland during WWI and WWII”
Popular Culture Association National Conference, New Orleans, LA (April 2009)
“Blame the Body: The Use of the Waltz for Character Transformation in Fantasy Film”
Popular Culture Association National Conference, San Francisco, CA (March 2008)
“Going Public: The Collaborative Nature of Site Specific Choreography”
Popular Culture Association National Conference, Boston, MA (April 2007)
“Altering Form and Function: Applying Principles of Architectural Design to Site Specific
Choreography”
Society of Dance History Scholars Conference, Banff, Canada (June 2006)
“Submerged Ascension: A Collaborative Design for Multi-Media Dance Performance”
International Federation for Theatre Research Conference, Washington D.C. (June 2005)
“Dancing with Digital Partners: The Impact of the Digital Age on Dance as an Art Form”
She was also featured in an article about site-specific choreographers in DANCE magazine (April 2008)
Other: In 2013, Deidre worked with Norm Weston and Kirill Gliadkovsky in the Music Departments to
stage a new production of Rite of Spring for the 100th anniversary, and created a new version of
choreography, featuring 22 of our dancers. We staged a lecture-performance production in the
McKinney Theatre, which also featured a silent art auction to raise money for the departments. This
February, she is working with the Physics and Theater departments to stage a quantum physics/dance
production, Entangled States, which will again have both a lecture and performance element. She applied
for, and received an Angels for the Arts grant for Entangled States, which has allowed her to have
costumes, lighting, pay tech costs, and purchase diffraction gradient glasses for the audience (which they
will get to use) She is hoping that an interdisciplinary production uniting an academic department with
the arts can become an annual tradition! Norm Weston (music department) and Deidre have made plans
to collaborate with math and architecture in two years to do a Fibonacci-themed production (he will
write a new work over his sabbatical for it)! With both Rite of Spring and Entangled States, She has also
given a guest lecture in Gary Luke’s Honors Humanities classes tying in the dance themes to their units.
In 2007, while an adjunct faculty member, she collaborated with the Liberal Arts division and the library
(before it was demolished and recreated as the LRC), to stage a site-specific dance production based
around 10 banned works of literature for the 25th national anniversary of banned books week, entitled
Mightier than the Sword: Dancing Volumes for Banned Books—the performances were set on all three
floors of the library, and audiences were led by a guide through the library to view the performances—
we had two full weekends of sold-out performances.
Please attach a one page description of your nominee and why you feel they should be an Educator of the Year.
Deidre started teaching modern dance and dance history at Saddleback College in summer 2006; she was
adjunct from 2006-2012, and was then hired full-time in fall 2012, she’s been at the college for eight
years! As you can see from her extensive resume’ Deidre is an amazing person and instructor and her
commitment to the college and the community deserves recognition. Not to demean anyone, Deidre has
done more in eight years than many do in a career and she always finds a way to do whatever she is
asked and to do it well. She is a model instructor who understands every aspect of community college
instruction and she brings out the best in her students as well as her colleagues. In light of all of the
information I’ve included in the application, there’s really not much more I can add!