Supporting Your SNOA Initiatives on Campus
As part of our SNOA initiative, NOA encourages faculty sponsors to serve as mentors to help connect classroom to campus activity planning for the year ahead with your students. Faculty can assist students in developing projects in the classroom that link directing, research, and SNOA student activities that highlight your department/university’s goals for student success. As you begin to explore these possibilities, consider how your students are involved not only in your department/area, but across your university in student organizations, honor’s college, professional/social clubs, etc. Faculty sponsors and SNOA chapters should consider travel funding requests from their home institutions for specials events, conferences, professional development, etc. for students. I have included a short list to help faculty sponsors get started in assisting their students for budget planning and resources on their campuses to support their SNOA Chapter initiatives.
- Student Research and Creative Activity Travel Funding
Annual funding for student creative activities may be available with a request to assist in SNOA development activities from your Department Chair, Dean, Provost, and/or University student fees through research and development. - Student performances at competitions
Explore support for national student level of voice and opera scenes competitions through your department chair, voice/opera area coordinator, local non-profit arts organizations. - Student Governments Funding for Clubs/Student Activities
If your university/college opera ensemble is registered as a student activity or club, you can transition this into a SNOA chapter for students to apply for funding support from student government to attend these events to enhance students’ community performance activities. - Campus Activities Funds
Create campus activities for interactive opera performances. SNOA chapters can review how to apply for campus activities funds to attend a workshop to help them learn about creating different activities for pop-up opera events like opera cabaret, student talent shows, non-profit activities for community engagement, etc. - Applying for Professional Development or Grant Funds for Research Presentations
If you have undergraduate or graduate students that are assisting with research, faculty can add travel funding in your grant applications to present with your students at NOA regional and national conferences. This provides them professional engagement opportunities to learn in a mentored experience in poster, lecture, or paneled discussions on your research topic. - Honors College Thesis Research Funding for Travel
If your undergraduate students are part of the honor’s college at your university, you can have them request funding to travel for conference to expand their knowledge firsthand through this conference to prepare their opera research, performance project, etc. They can meet specialists in their field through sessions, master classes, and more at conferences. - Recital and Special Performance Fundraisers
If your SNOA chapter members want to attend a conference, you can help organize a recital to fundraise the travel expenses needed with local community partners. Many of our students are already hired as section leaders at churches, synagogues, and/or community choirs in your area. Many of these organizations have members that want to engage and support their students in recitals, opera performances, cabarets, etc. You can organize a short opera scenes program mixed with the repertoire for the semester. These programs enrich the lives of our community, while providing performance and professional development for our students. - Crowdfunding
If your ensemble or student can use Crowdfunding, you can use the recital model to link to a social media account to raise funding for students to participate in conference activities. They can put performances of scenes, arias, musical theater excerpts with a narrative about why they want to attend this conference for professional development. You should check with your department about these opportunities online. - Teaching and Learning Center on Campus
Contact your professional development coordinator or the teaching and learning center on your campus to discuss potential campus wide performance projects that your students could be a part of with their operatic programming for the year. How can you connect your course to another course to collaborate with a colleague in another discipline? These unique course offerings often provide funding for students to do research, attend conferences, and create performances opportunities.
These are some of the quickest resources to connect funding to support your students across the university as you begin coordinating with your SNOA members on what activities they’d like to create in the next year for opera education, professional development, and special events on and off campus. Faculty sponsors should also reach out to other members that have brought students in the past few years to find out what unique offerings their universities may provide to support conference travel. If you have questions, please contact Dr. Joshua May, Vice President of Regions, at may_joshua3@columbusstate.edu.