Dance Faculty & Staff

Professor Shakia Barron and choreographer Tatiana Desardouin discussing the dance Connection (2022) in rehearsal at Mt. Holyoke College, photo: Derek Fowles

Return to the Dance Home Page

Five College Dance staff work with individual campus dance faculty and staff to give students access to courses, performance opportunities, and events across the campuses. Students and faculty alike benefit from a large and diversely skilled community of peers, which FCD works to cultivate on an ongoing basis. Faculty and chairs from all the departments meet regularly together and with FCD staff, who also work closely with each campus’s departmental administrators. We all commit to resource sharing and additional coordination because together we can offer and create much more than we can as isolated departments. Click on the links below to access individual faculty members' homepages at their respective institutions.

Five College Dance Faculty

Man's head

Chris Aiken

Smith College

Woman faculty member

Shakia Barron

Mount Holyoke College

Man with light skin and light brown hair smiling.

Rodger Blum

Smith College

A woman with brown skin and brown hair in baggy pants with one leg forward and one arm reaching out. Her knees are bent.

Lauren Cox

UMass Amherst

A woman with light skin and long light brown in a blue blouse smiling.

Barbie Diewald

Mount Holyoke College

A black man with shoulder length dreads leans his head on his hand showing golden embroidery on his cuff.

Duane Lee Holland

UMass Amherst

An Asian woman with shoulder length black hair in a blue jacket smiles at the camera.

Jungeun Kim

Amherst College

woman dancing

Angie Hauser

Smith College

Man playing keyboards

Peter Jones

Mount Holyoke College

Professor portrait

Jake Meginsky

Smith College 

Professor portrait

Jenna Riegel

Amherst College

A man with light brown skin and dark hair in a suit and tie stands smiling in front of bookcases.

Lester Tomé

Smith College

Professor portrait

Tom Vacanti

UMass Amherst

Professor portrait

Lailye Weidman

Hampshire College

Professor portrait

Wendy Woodson

Amherst College

Five College Dance Staff

Melinda Buckwalter

Melinda Buckwalter

Managing Director
Technical director Hayden Gadd

Hayden Gadd

Technical Director
A man with black hair stares at the camera. He is wearing a black collared shirt and dark grey sweater.

Matthew Adelson

Production Manager
Portrait of the assistant production manager carlie nieman against a gray background with white lines. Carlie is wearing a blue & white bandana and a black tank top.

Carlie Nieman

Assistant Production Manager

If you are a Five College student having any issues with a faculty or staff member, please refer to this document and reach out to your home campus chair with any questions.