The CEL Nucleus:
We are a collective of education designers, creatives, and integrated learning specialists skilled in research-based arts integration strategies and committed to meaningful and effective teacher professional development, system-wide transformation, authentic learning, and social justice. Since 2014, we have been working with teachers and community partners to engage student creativity.
Jessica Land
Jessica is a facilitator of learning experiences that bridge the arts, the natural world, schools, self, and community. Her commitment to engaging learners in authentic creative expression is rooted in her own explorations with visual arts, dance, the natural world and world cultures. She is a certified teacher with fifteen years experience teaching in alternative and traditional school settings. She earned her M.A. in Experiential Education at Prescott College in Prescott, AZ and her B.A., Magna Cum Laude in English/Writing and Fine Arts, at St. Lawrence University in Canton, NY. Nature continues to be her most influential muse and teacher.
Nate Beard
Nate K. Beard is an Integrated Learning Specialist, drama teacher, and professional development provider, currently building teacher and administration efficacy in arts integration. His work focuses primarily on social and emotional health including skills in communication, collaboration, metacognition, and metaphorical thinking. Built from a background in tragedy-based drama therapy, he has developed and co-developed curriculum and teaching practices that provide opportunities for meaning-making for adolescent students. He has trained over 100 educators in process drama techniques.
Mari Livie
Mari Livie has been a teaching artist in Lane County schools since 1999. She creates and teaches arts workshops for schools, city programs, and healthcare facilities. Working with these various organizations brings Mari into contact with a diverse population of blossoming artists and educators. She’s generated arts workshops for children with autism, the elderly, incarcerated youth, homeless youth, alter-abled adults, English language learners, teachers, and war veterans. Mari pursues her own arts practice on days she is not teaching. You can see her work at marilivie.com and hear her work on soundcloud.com/thankyou-einstein.
Ross Anderson
Ross is a designer, researcher, and strategist in the education field working to harness creative development, agentic engagement, and embodied learning for educators and students, alike. His 17 years of leadership and innovation in the education field emerges from a background in architectural design and teaching and practice in the art of Afro-Brazilian Capoeira. Ross earned his B.A in architecture at Yale University and his Ph.D. in educational leadership at the University of Oregon. He has led numerous large research and development projects funded by the U.S. Department of Education and National Science Foundation. He has published more than 50 articles, chapters, and white papers on creative development, educational change, arts integration, and teaching and learning.
