How can educators maintain their creative spark and continue to give to their students and learning communities year after year? How can educators develop their own creative practice and creative self and use this creativity in their pedagogy?

These questions from experienced educators lead the Creative Pulse founders to develop a progressive and transformation summer program for Master Teachers that recognized the fundamental value of a teachers' own creative process and the impact that has on their teaching.

The content areas that serve as the foundation of the program include Arts Integration, understanding cultural influences on teaching and learning, authentic assessment, Multiple Intelligences, leadership in the arts and education, human growth and development, place-based education, and digital storytelling.

The Creative Pulse embraces critical and creative thinking processes and habits of mind, enabling our students to develop, refine and integrate these processes into their own thinking and learning abilities, as well as those of their students. The program is unique and highly innovative, embracing new models for teaching and learning, and serving as an example of what education should be.

The Pulse offers a wide variety of experiences. Seminars constitute the core academic program, providing the groundwork for teaching theories and exposing students to contemporary thinkers in arts education. Studio apprenticeships provide hands-on experiences that enable students to explore new areas of expression, nurture creativity, and take risks with their art.

Committed faculty from each of the schools in the College of Visual and Performing Arts challenge students to dig deeply. Creative Pulse students have shared their work with their classes and communities in a staggering breadth and scope, connecting to arts and education in every discipline. In addition to the participants of the Creative Pulse, the beneficiaries are the thousands of students, colleagues and community members our student's touch.

Each year new Creative Pulse students enter the program. They are not typical students. They are professional classroom teachers and talented arts/educators, at all stages of their careers, wanting to grow in their life's work. They have the skills to think critically about issues, debate the merits of ideas, and understand those ideas' worth in today's world. The Pulse reinvigorates their creative and critical drive.

As recent graduate Jackalynn Snow writes,

The Creative Pulse is, in fact, life-changing. After my first summer of study, my perspectives regarding myself and my talents had been transformed. A bursting forth of creation happens at the Pulse, and it brings with it renewed meaning and passion. Uplifting and motivating, the Creative Pulse program reminded me of my true identity and gave me the courage to claim it!