Tom Hagood.

Tom Hagood's global perspective as dance program director at Miami's Florida International University has won him the National Dance Education Organization's 2005 Visionary Award. By developing process-based curriculum and drawing diversity-sensitive faculty, Hagood encourages a climate where ballet, modern, Spanish, and Africanist traditions flourish on even ground. He points out that unlike ballet, where we have general agreement on expectations for beginning, intermediate, and advanced study, this kind of graduated progression is often missing in Africanist dance. At FlU, Hagood implements sequential learning in all styles.

But his mission entails more than sensible syllabus design. "You cannot drown in academic speak," warns Hagood, who advocates becoming "an ambassador for the making of dance." To this end, the department presents the work of local artists, providing a venue, labor, and publicity. "They don't come in with any overhead. And we pay them," Hagood says. FlU also sends dancers to teach in the prison and in local schools. "Every grant I write has a significant service component."

Hagood's passions have found nourishment in what he calls "a unique stew" of influences, including Graham technique and kinesiology. His scholarly achievements (he published A History of Dance in American Higher Education in 2000) inform his activism. Armed with a Ph.D. in dance sociology from the University of Wisconsin, he helped found the NDEO in 1997 and became its first president.