Southeast Center for Education in the Arts

Dr. Bennett Lentczner

Bennett Lentczner, founding president of RealVisions, administrator, artist and educator, is recognized across the country for his leadership of the renowned New World School of the Arts. A university dean and provost for more than eighteen years, Dr. Lentczner has served on national, regional, state and local boards and associations, as well as evaluation and accreditation teams across the country. He has more than 10 years experience teaching grades 4-12. His work in evaluation and assessment includes more than 20 chapters of Young Audiences, Inc. (providers of arts education programs and residencies in K-12 schools), The Leonard Bernstein Center for Education through the Arts, and the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools.

Dr. Lentczner was responsible for producing the International Council of Fine Arts Deans Principles and Standards of Arts Education. His arts education experience includes service on panels for the National Endowment for the Arts, the Getty Foundation for Education in the Arts, and the South Carolina Arts Commission. He has also served as a member of the National Coalition for Arts Education and the Goals 2000 Steering Committee and through RealVisions. Dr. Lentczner holds degrees from the Juilliard School of Music, Columbia University and Ball State University.

Dr. Linda Whitesitt

Linda Whitesitt brings twenty-five years of teaching experience in K-12 and post-secondary education to her work in arts integration evaluation and program design. She has led undergraduate and graduate classes at Queens University (Charlotte), Winthrop University (Rock Hill, SC) and Radford University (VA), and served as a middle school and high school orchestra director (Charlotte and Bethesda, MD). Her work includes developing and coordinating string training programs in Miami Beach, FL and teaching as an artist-in-residence in West Palm Beach.

She has served as a member of a National Endowment for the Arts’ grant review panel and an evaluator for Young Audiences, Inc. She helped form the South Carolina Curriculum Leadership Institute in the Arts and founded community arts organizations and arts celebrations in Charlotte, Rock Hill, and Berkeley Springs, WV.

A published musicologist on American music and women patrons of music, Whitesitt holds degrees in music performance (B.M.) and music history and literature (M.M.) from the Peabody Conservatory of the Johns Hopkins University and musicology (Ph.D.) from the University of Maryland at College Park. She is a professional violinist and amateur hammered dulcimer player and has performed in orchestras and chamber ensembles in Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Florida.

Dr. Elda Franklin

Elda Franklin holds degrees in music performance and music education from Florida State University and the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. She is a professor emerita of Music at Winthrop University in South Carolina, where she taught undergraduate and graduate music education courses for 25 years, established and directed the Orff-Schulwerk Certification Program, and received the Distinguished Professor award in 1993. While at Winthrop, Franklin was active as a member of the South Carolina Arts in Basic Curriculum Steering Committee, and helped establish the Curriculum Leadership Institutes in the Arts and the Arts Education Leadership Institute. In 2001 she served as interim director of the ABC Project.

During her years at Winthrop, Dr. Franklin was a violist with the Charlotte Symphony, and later served as arts assessment specialist and teaching artist for the Charlotte Symphony’s Education Program. From 1999 until 2009, Franklin was assessment and evaluation consultant for the North Carolina Blumenthal Performing Arts Center Education Institute in Charlotte, where she was responsible for annual evaluations of the arts-integrated programs at each of the five Blumenthal Partner Schools, and assisted in the training of teaching artists.

Franklin has presented at national and international conferences in the arts, including the Arts Schools Network, the Kennedy Center Partnerships in Education, the North Carolina Conference on the Arts, and the South Carolina Alliance for Arts Education. Her publications include numerous articles in national and international journals on music education and arts assessment, including assessment of teaching artists. She is also active as a violist, performing regularly with local orchestras and opera groups in the Charlotte area, and has recently developed an interest in learning to play Scottish fiddle.

Drs. Franklin and Whitesitt have used macro planning and micro analysis in the evaluation of whole school and professional development arts integration programs. They have developed logic models to help schools align project design components, modify implementation processes and evaluate program impact. They have utilized the field-tested, reliable and valid observation instrument developed by Dr. Franklin in over 1000 classroom observations to assess student engagement, teaching strategies, and planning processes.

Whitesitt and Franklin have worked together as RealVisions’ arts integration evaluation and design team for seven years. They have carried out evaluations of a number of different arts integration and professional development programs, including initiatives supported by U.S. Department of Education Arts Education Model Development and Dissemination grants and Professional Development for Arts Educators grants. Their work has included the three-year evaluation of the Arts Integration in Model Schools Program (Montgomery County, MD), cited in the recent report by the President’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities Reinvesting in Arts Education: Winning America’s Future Through Creative Schools.

Together they have worked with schools and school districts to design and implement data-driven arts integration projects and align teacher training institutes with program and curricular objectives. They have co-authored an article on creating professional learning communities in arts integration schools and presented sessions on the development of logic models to inform the development, implementation and evaluation of arts integration programs at conferences for the Arts Schools Network and the South Carolina Alliance for Arts Education.

RealVisions
173 Ridge View Drive
Berkeley Springs, WV
25411 304.258.0838

www.realvisions.net/