When Deric McNish came to CU Boulder’s PhD program in Theatre & Performance Studies he was given his first teaching position in an Acting for Non-Majors course. His experience in the classroom inspired his dissertation topic, training methods for student-actors with disabilities in college courses, after he discovered how few available resources there were on the subject.
After obtaining his doctorate, Deric began working as an Associate Professor at Michigan State University’s Department of Theatre in 2013. There he developed a course for Disability and Performance, wrote a chapter for New Directions and Teaching Theatre Art, and has used theatre in courses as a way of teaching English, increasing fluency in the language, and promoting self-confidence.
He currently runs the BFA acting program at Michigan State, is transitioning towards becoming the Graduate Program Director, and as of July of 2021, has acquired tenure. He now intends to use this new position to plan his next steps to carry his work forward into the worlds of English Language Learning and Disability in Performance.