Dance professor wins Atkins Library Faculty Engagement Award

Kaustavi Sarkar, assistant professor of dance, is the recipient of the 2019 J. Murrey Atkins Library Faculty Engagement Award.

Each fall, the Atkins Library Faculty Engagement Award is presented to a UNC Charlotte faculty member who has engaged in innovative or exceptional work with library collections, programs and services. The award, along with a $2,000 allocation for professional development, enables the library to recognize outstanding faculty contributions to the library’s mission, vision and strategic initiatives.

For several semesters, Sarkar has worked with library staff to develop her research agenda in Virtual Reality (VR) Interactive experiences in dance. Among her activities, she brought her Dance 2402 Performance Practicum class to the library’s Visualization Lab to investigate the usefulness of VR technologies, such as VR games, in dance training and performance.

The Atkins Library was the digital host for registration, selection and programmatic information for the conference “Sensate Technicities: A Conversation Across Dance Cultures and Techniques,” which Sarkar organized in May 2019. More than 100 practitioners and scholars of Odissi dance from across the globe applied and participated in the conference at UNC Charlotte.

Tiffany Morin, English Department lecturer and coordinator of the English Learning Community, and Malin Pereira, professor of English and executive director of the Honors College, were award finalists.

Sarkar will be honored during a social and faculty award ceremony, scheduled for 4 p.m., Wednesday, Oct. 2, in Atkins Library’s Halton Reading Room. Attendees are asked to RSVP by Sept. 27. During the social, faculty can meet the librarians who can support their research, instruction and scholarship in numerous ways.