Institute Professors
Institute Professors work across the Herberger Institute on a number of different initiatives and programs, working to promote cross-disciplinary progress as well as trans domain activities within the university community and across the city and state. They demonstrate new ways for artists and students to thrive on campuses through a spirit of enterprise, discovery, innovation, and change. Institute Professors are core faculty members in the Master of Arts in Creative Enterprise and Cultural Leadership program.
Wanda Dalla Costa
Wanda Dalla Costa, AIA, LEED A.P. holds a joint position at The Design School and the Del E. Webb School of Construction (Institute Professor and Associate Professor) as well as the honor of being a Senior Global Futures Scientist with the Julie Ann Wrigley Global Futures Laboratory at GIOS. She is a member of the Saddle Lake First Nation and has spent nearly 20 years working with Indigenous communities in North America. Dalla Costa teaches an interdisciplinary service learning studio at ASU, where students engage directly with local tribal communities and started the Indigenous Design Collaborative to support student professional development. Her interests include community-driven design, Indigenous methodologies, Indigenous placemaking/placekeeping and the vernacular intelligence of regional architectures. She recently exhibited at 2018 Venice Biennale as part of a group of 18 Indigenous architects (Unceded / Team Canada). She holds a Master of Design Research (City Design) from the Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc) and a Master of Architecture from the University of Calgary. Her company, Tawaw Architecture Collective (tawarc.com) is based in Tempe, Arizona.
Maria Rosario Jackson
Maria Rosario Jackson’s expertise is in comprehensive community revitalization, systems change, arts and culture in communities and dynamics of race and ethnicity. She’s worked widely with philanthropy and governments advising on strategy, program design, research, learning and evaluation. She’s an Institute Professor with a dual appointment in The Design School and the College of Public Service and Community Solutions. She leads the Studio for Creativity, Place and Equitable Communities at ASU. Prior, she was with Urban Institute in Washington, D.C. for 18 years.
Liz Lerman
Liz Lerman is a choreographer, performer, writer, educator and speaker, and the recipient of numerous honors, including a 2002 MacArthur Genius Grant, a 2011 United States Artists Ford Fellowship in Dance, and a Deutsch Fellow. A key aspect of her artistry is opening her process to various publics from shipbuilders to physicists, construction workers to ballerinas, resulting in bothresearch and outcomes that are participatory, relevant, urgent, and usable by others. She founded Liz Lerman Dance Exchange in 1976 and cultivated the company's unique multi-generational ensemble into a leading force in contemporary dance until 2011.
She was an artist-in-residence and visiting lecturer at Harvard University in 2011, and her most recent work, "Healing Wars," toured across the US in 2014-15. Lerman conducts residencies on Critical Response Process, creative research, the intersection of art and science, and the building of narrative within dance performance at such institutions as Harvard University, Yale School of Drama, Wesleyan University, Guildhall School of Music and Drama, and the National Theatre Studio, among others. Her collection of essays, "Hiking the Horizontal: Field Notes from a Choreographer," was published in 2011 by Wesleyan University Press and released in paperback in 2014. In 2016, Lerman was named the first Institute Professor at the Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts at Arizona State University, where she is building a new ensemble lab focused on creative research.
Daniel Bernard Roumain
Dr. Daniel Bernard Roumain is an Institute Professor and Professor of Practice within the School of Music, Dance and Theater. Roumain’s acclaimed work as a composer, performer, educator, and activist spans more than two decades, and he has been commissioned by venerable artists and institutions worldwide. “About as omnivorous as a contemporary artist gets” (NYT), Roumain is perhaps the only composer whose collaborations span Philip Glass, Bill T. Jones, Savion Glover and Lady Gaga.
Known for his signature violin sounds infused with myriad electronic, urban, and African-American music influences, Roumain takes his genre-bending music beyond the proscenium. He is a composer of chamber, orchestral, and operatic works; has won an Emmy for Outstanding Musical Composition for his collaborations with ESPN; featured as keynote performer at technology conferences; and created large scale, site-specific musical events for public spaces. Roumain earned his doctorate in Music Composition from the University of Michigan and is currently Institute Professor and Professor of Practice At Arizona State University where he founded and runs DBR LAB, a project-based development and producing space for ASU students.
An avid arts industry leader, Roumain serves as Vice Chair for the Board of Directors of the Association of Performing Arts Presenters; is a Board Member of the League of American Orchestras; is on the Advisory Committee of the Sphinx Organization and Music By Black Composers; and was co-chair of 2015 and 2016 APAP Conferences.
Roumain is the Roth Family Distinguished Visiting Scholar at Dartmouth College (NH); the Artistic Ambassador for FirstWorks (RI); and the Creative Chair for The Flynn (VT).
Roumain has most recently created the musical score for The Just and The Blind, a collaboration with spoken word artist and writer Marc Bamuthi Joseph, commissioned by Carnegie Hall; and a new work for Washington State University’s Symphonic Band, Falling Black Into The Sky, based on the work of the artist James Turrell and his “light work” at Roden Crater; and Cipher, a pocket opera for the Philadelphia Boys Choir, with a libretto by Joseph, based on the incarceration of young, Black boys. Recently completed works include Why Did They Kill Sandra Bland?; An Apology For Black Women; i am a white person who ______ Black People; and the score for a new documentary entitled Ailey, on the work and life of the dancer/choreographer, Alvin Ailey.
Roumain conceived and co-produced Towards a More Perfect Union, an evening-length orchestral experience involving all BIPOC composers and new commissioned works for the ASU Symphony Orchestra. Recent projects include new works and collaborations for the Prototype Festival (NYC), The Kennedy Center (WA), FirstWorks (RI); the Norfolk Chamber Music Festival (CT); the Fresh Inc Festival (IL); and a new opera for the Lyric Opera of Chicago in collaboration with Anna Deveare Smith (libretto).
