VCUarts Professor and Theatre Graduate Program Director Aaron Anderson has won the 2024 a2ru Award for Excellence in Arts in Health Education.
a2ru’s goal is to celebrate the arts’ transformative role in higher education and foster connections between those related ideas, people and institutions. In collaboration with its Arts in Health Educators Working Group, a2ru established this annual award in 2023 to recognize outstanding and innovative pedagogy that supports the rapid growth of arts in health.
As the founding director of the Standardized Patient Program at the VCU School of Medicine and the Theater and Performance Program at the Children’s Hospital of Richmond, Anderson regularly blurs the lines between the arts and healthcare to great success. It’s no wonder he’s one of the only non-physicians to earn VCU’s School of Medicine Award for Educational Innovation.
His interdisciplinary research and practice perfectly illustrate the arts’ uncanny ability to enhance health and wellbeing in institutions and communities alike.
When considering Anderson for the a2ru award, the judging panel was particularly impressed that he “demonstrated the ability to build bridges across academic disciplines while publishing extensively and remaining active as a theatre artist … What’s most impressive, though, is the extent to which he has reached out not only into his home university but to other universities. His collaborative style has truly made a difference.”
Anderson accepted this award from Ferol Carytsas – Director of the Center for Arts in Medicine at the University of Florida and chair of a2ru’s Arts in Health Educators Working Group – at a2ru’s 2024 conference, “Generate | Integrate: Technology, the Arts and Design.”
We congratulate Anderson on this stellar achievement and applaud his consistently impressive cross-disciplinary collaboration.
For the full story, read a2ru’s celebratory announcement.