ASU students are invited to the first ever Herberger Institute Day on Oct. 12 to check out over 50 workshops, which will include a challenge to create chairs out of cardboard, fashion illustration, Latin dance and laughter yoga.
Workshops will be held from 12-1 p.m., 1:30-2:30 p.m. and 3-4 p.m. Interested students can register through The Herberger Institute Day webpage for up to three workshops and "#creaTable," an event on Forest Mall where students can come together and eat for free from 4-6 p.m.
Faculty and staff are presenting this free event to allow the Herberger Institute to showcase their programs and allow students from various majors to get to know each other.
Dean Steven Tepper of the Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts said this event "is about the celebration of that creative drive and curiosity that lies in the heart of the Herberger Institute.
"The event became an idea about three years ago when one of our faculty members in the school of music — David Schildkret — was visiting with me in the dean’s office and basically said something like, 'Why couldn’t we take a day off and celebrate collective creativity together?'" Tepper said.
The institute, which includes more than 100 degree programs and the ASU Art Museum, is one of the largest design and arts colleges in the U.S., so Tepper said he hopes this event will help students work together and understand that they are a part of a community at ASU.
“It’s going to be exciting to see, having been here for three-and-a-half years and really never seen the whole family together in one place,” Tepper said. “It will probably be the proudest moment of my time as dean. That is what I am anticipating.”
David Schildkret said this is an effort to give students an opportunity to experience something outside their normal school day.
“We are an amazing, busy, diverse and active place, but most of us spend 80 percent of our day doing the thing we do. In my case it’s the choral institute, yet we have all this other wonderful activity going on that people don’t get to experience,” Schildkret said.
Schildkret said he believes it is important to get people to try new activities they may be interested in.
“We have high hopes that it is going to be a very energizing and exciting day in which students will get to make connections,” he said.
Nyomi Gruber, a program manager at the Herberger Institute, said there are already 850 people registered for this event. Registration for the meal closes on Oct. 4 at 5 p.m., and workshop registrations close on Oct. 6 at 5 p.m.
Gruber suggested a few of the over 50 events to choose from, including the Collective voices of the Holocaust workshop, the Ensemble lab: Create/Connect and the Open air mattress talk.
“It is all homegrown and all the workshops are hosted by institute faculty, students or staff and then the meal itself has a planning committee made up of faculty and staff," Gruber said.
Full descriptions and registration pages for the workshops, creaTables and the two after-hours workshops can be found here.
Reach the reporter at quindrea.yazzie@asu.edu and follow @quindreayazzie on Twitter.
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