University of Utah

Cord Bowen joined the University of Utah in the summer of 2016 as the Director for the Multi-Disciplinary Design Program within the College of Architecture and Planning.  He received his Bachelor of Architecture and Master of Business from the University of Houston accompanied by a Master of Architecture with a focus in Product Design from Parsons School of Design in New York.  During the past fifteen years, Cord taught as an Adjunct Assistant Professor for the Hines College of Architecture and Design at the University of Houston.  He is one of the founding faculty for the globally recognized University of Houston Industrial Design Program.  Administratively, he has served as the Undergraduate Foundation Coordinator for Industrial Design, Architecture and Interior Architecture and also served as the Associate Director for the Graduate Architecture program. His teaching history includes Architecture, Product Design, Interior Architecture, Graphic Design and Design Entrepreneurialism. Professionally, Cord has worked on award winning Product Design and Architecture projects and currently serves as a consulting partner for Local Design Office.  His research focuses on the future of “workplace” where he has collaborated with the global furniture design and manufacturing company, Steelcase.  In the coming years he looks forward to supporting and leading the continued efforts within the MDD program

Gretchen A. Case is Chief of the Program in Medical Ethics and Humanities, and an Associate Professor in the Department of Internal Medicine and the Department of Pediatrics. She received a BA in Speech Communication and History and an MA in Communication Studies from UNC-Chapel Hill and a PhD in Performance Studies from UC, Berkeley. Dr. Case’s research and teaching interests are in the medical humanities (aka healthcare humanities): the many ways in which the arts and humanities intersect with the medical arts and sciences. Her scholarly projects often combine communication, performance, disability theory, cultures of medicine, oral history, and ethnography. Dr. Case also has more than ten years of experience as a public historian, specializing in histories of science and medicine. In addition to teaching at the School of Medicine, Dr. Case has taught in the Department of Theatre at the University and is a facilitator for the Physicians’ Literature and Medicine reading group. She has received funding from the National Endowment for the Arts and contributed significantly to projects funded by the National Institutes of Health and the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Alexandra Harbold is Co-Founder and Co-Artistic Director of Flying Bobcat Theatrical

Laboratory, and a freelance director, actor, voiceover artist, dramaturg, and teacher based in

Salt Lake City. Prior to teaching with the Department, Harbold was honored to work as a

guest director at the U; productions with the Department of Theatre include The Odyssey, The

Rivals, You Never Can Tell, Self Defense, or death of some salesmen; The Owl Girl; Love Alone; and The Eccentrics. Alexandra Harbold earned her Masters in Performance Studies from the University of London, Goldsmiths College, and her Bachelor of Arts in Theatre (High Honors, magna cum laude) from Middlebury College. She is an alumna of SITI Company’s Skidmore Summer Intensive, BADA’s Midsummer at Oxford, Michael Howard Studios in NYC, Plan-B Theatre/Meat & Potato Theatre’s Directors’ Lab, and The Field (SLC).

She is a proud member of the Actor’s Equity Association (AEA) and StateraArts. 

Greg Hatch’s research interests intersect library and information science education with the arts. He is interested in exploring visual literacy, visual communication, and interdisciplinary applications of the arts. Also, he researches the use of the arts (works of art, artifacts, performances, and the application of artistic skills) in instruction and classroom environments and other non-arts settings, as well as the benefits, uses and challenges of the digital preservation of the arts. Hatch has a BA in Theater from Saint John’s University, MN and an MLIS, from the Information School at the University of Washington.

Elpitha Tsoutsounakis is a designer, printer, and Associate Director of the 
Multi-Disciplinary Design program at the University of Utah. In addition to client work, she maintains a studio practice in print as a speculative form of product and publication. Her academic research explores the role of design in our collective ecological consciousness and the experience of public lands.

Rebecca Zarate is a music psychotherapist, musician, researcher, and educator of music therapy, arts therapies, and arts and health. Her research focuses on community mental health and sustainability, health, wellbeing, and the arts. A licensed Creative Arts Therapist, Board Certified Music Therapist, and certified Vocal Psychotherapist, she has a specific area of expertise in mental health, anxiety, and improvisation-based music therapy.

Zarate’s American story began in 1999 when she graduated with a BMus(hons) from Goldsmiths College, University of London, and embarked on her master’s degree in music therapy at New York University. Being an international faculty member has given her a unique perspective on cultural experiences and issues of access to arts and health. This is at the heart of her mission to do research that has transferrable, translatable, and impactful meaning in the lives of the public and community health and wellbeing.

Her 30-year career working in the arts and healthcare, and with traumatized children, youth, and adults, has led her to be interested in the clinical, social, and cultural intersections of anxiety, and writes and presents on this from clinical, critical, and cultural perspectives. She is dedicated to translating clinical and educational knowledge of music and the arts as a health mechanism into the greater community through the intersections of cross-discipline, interdisciplinary collaborations, and arts and health technologies.

She is the author of the book, “Music psychotherapy and anxiety: Social, community, and clinical contexts,” published by Jessica Kingsley, where she illuminates the various dimensions of anxiety, and the inquiry of music and arts, and the global social issues of the rising impact of anxiety and stress.