User:Patryanmadson/sandbox

PATRICIA RYAN MADSON, winner of Stanford’s Dinkelspiel Award for Outstanding Innovation in Undergraduate Education in 1998, was on the faculty in Drama at Stanford University from 1977 – 2005 where she has served as the head of the undergraduate acting program. Now a Stanford University Emerita she founded the Stanford Improvisors in 1992. She taught beginning and advanced level courses in Improvisation for both undergraduates and adults in Stanford's Continuing Studies Program and she was also the founding director of the Stanford Summer School in Improvisation.

Her two decades of work teaching improvisation at Stanford spawned a career as a consultant to business, philanthropic and educational groups. She published IMPROV WISDOM: Don’t Prepare, Just Show Up (Random House/Harmony Books) in 2005. Currently in nine languages, the book is used as a textbook around the world. Before Stanford she was on the faculties of Pennsylvania State University and Denison University.

In 1996 she launched the Creativity Initiative at Stanford, an interdisciplinary alliance of faculty who share the belief that creativity can be taught. Patricia taught regularly for the Esalen Institute, and was a visiting professor at the California Institute for Integral Studies and the Institute for Transpersonal Psychology in Palo Alto. Interviewed in the New York Times by Jesse Kornbluth in a feature article, titled: "What I would do if I were President." Another NYTimes article describes her work as a leader in the field of Improvisation training.

She has been an invited speaker for Sun Microsystems Japan Division, the National Association of Drama Therapists, the Western Psychological Association, Duke University East Asian Studies Center and the Meaningful Life Therapy Association in Japan, a cancer support group in Kyoto. She was a keynote speaker for Remax Realtors of Mexico, and delivered a paper “Listening to Rumi: Ancient Wisdom for Everyday Life” at the Mevlana Celaleddin Rumi: Love, Science and Life Conference, Konya Turkey in 2006 ]] . She has taught workshops on creativity and team building for Hewlett Packard, Apple Computers, Adobe Systems, Extempo, IDEO, Price Waterhouse, Foothill College Health Services, the Stanford School of Education, Stanford University Women’s Healthy Living Conference, for the School of Engineering “Ambidextrous Thinking” class, and for the Mayfield Fellows at Stanford.

She was certified as a Constructive Living™ Instructor in 1987 at the Health Center Pacific on Maui by Dr. David K. Reynolds. In Japan and China she has lectured to the International Association of Morita Therapy and to the International Congress of Naikan Therapy in Tokyo. Patricia was a founding board member of the BATS School of Improv in San Francisco and she was the first winner of the Rebecca Stockley Superhero award. For ten years Patricia was the American Coordinator of the Oomoto School of Traditional Japanese Arts in Kameoka, Japan.

A watercolorist and Etegami artist her work can be seen on Flickr. Her published writings include a chapter titled “Reality’s Work” in the anthology: Mindfulness and Meaningful Work, edited by Claude Whitmyer (Parallex Press, 1995) as well as chapters in SUNY Press books Plunging Through the Clouds and Flowing Bridges, Quiet Waters both edited by Dr. David Reynolds. She was a contributor to the quarterly journal Thirty Thousand Days published by the ToDo Institute in Vermont.

She married Ronald Whitney Madson in 1989 and lives in El Granada, California.

http://www.stanford.edu/~patryan http://www.improvwisdom.com http://improvwisdom.blogspot.com http://flickr.com/photos/patriciamadson/sets