Theater Department's Yao Chen Awarded Lilly Fellowship for Teaching Excellence
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Yao Chen, assistant professor of costume design in the Department of Theater, has been awarded the Lilly Fellowship for Teaching Excellence in the 2023-24 cohort. Chen, a costume and scenic designer with international design credits, will begin her fellowship in May 2023.
Awarded annually by the Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL), the Lilly Fellowship for Teaching Excellence enables promising early-career faculty to cultivate teaching skills and leadership in a special yearlong collaboration. Each year, up to eight teaching fellows are selected to work closely with CTL on individual projects that typically involve developing or redesigning a course.
In addition to her faculty position at UMass Amherst, Chen has served as a visiting lecturer at the school of fashion design at the Shanghai Institute of Visual Art in Shanghai, China; a guest lecturer at Zhe Jiang Sci -Tech University in HangZhou, China, and Dong Hua University in Shanghai, China; and SUNY New Paltz.
Chen’s award-winning costume design work has been featured in the United States, China, and Costa Rica. Her recent productions include “Radio Golf” (2020) at the Trinity Repertory Company; “Pete the Cat” (2020) at Orlando Repertory Theatre; “Diary of Anne Frank” (2019) at Indiana Repertory Theatre; “Little Prince” (2018) at Seattle Children’s Theatre; and “The Music Man” (2017) at Berkshire Theatre Group, as well as international productions including “I Am Tai Ping Goat” (2015) at Dong Gong and Long Fu theatres in Beijing, China, and “Amadeus” (2014) at the Theatre Espressivo in San Jose, Costa Rica.
The Lilly Fellowship for Teaching Excellence is a competitive award program with a long history at UMass Amherst that extends back to 1986. Since then, the fellowship has supported leadership in teaching by training over 268 faculty. Past Lilly Fellows include 31 Distinguished Teaching Award (DTA) winners; 37 College Outstanding Teaching Award (COTA) winners; one Manning Award winner; over 46 department chairs; 21 associate deans; and one dean.