Susan McFadden has been a non-tenure track Assistant Professor of Dance for WOU since Fall 1999. Originally from Canada where she began her Royal Academy of Dance ballet training with Wynne Shaw, Susan danced in the late 1970’s with Spectrum Dance in Victoria B.C. Susan received her MS in Dance from the University of Oregon and from 1985 until 1996 Susan was an Assistant Professor of Dance in Willamette University's Theatre Department where she taught a variety of dance classes and directed, as well as performed in, annual dance concerts. She also provided the choreography for many plays.

In 1996 she joined the dance faculty at Western Oregon University for one year. She then moved to the Vancouver, Washington school district’s Visual and Performing Arts Program where she was a K-5 dance specialist for two years. Since returning to WOU, she primarity has taught beginning level technique courses as well as Introduction to Dance. She also teaches sections of Creative Dance for Children, Evolution of Modern Dance, Ballet History and Dance Composition.

Interests within the dance field have been varied including dance in education and creative dance in the public school setting. Although not a current pursuit, Baroque dance has been a past interest and Susan studied the Baroque style of dance at summer sessions both at Stanford University and at the Jarvis Conservatory. As Susan is fond of saying, “The minuet is much like life: to complete it gracefully is more difficult than it looks.”

Susan is one of several WOU non-tenure track faculty recognized with the Center for Teaching and Learning’s Excellence in Teaching award in 2006. Susan’s fervent hope and devoted pursuit is to be less inclined to transfer her ideas about dance to students and more inclined to continue to change and modify her teaching strategies in order to discover how students can best build their own experiences and skills in dance for the 21st century.