Betsy Maloney Leaf, PhD, MFA, is the co-License Program Lead in the Arts in Education program. She works with the interarts (visual art, dance, theatre arts) initial license program and teaches undergraduate courses in the Department of Curriculum & Instruction.
Maloney Leaf's research examines the intersection between arts education, culturally relevant pedagogy, and educational policy. She has presented her research at several regional and national conferences, including American Educational Research Association (AERA), American Educational Studies Association (AESA), National Dance Education Organization (NDEO), and American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education (AACTE). Her work has been published in the Research in Dance Education, Youth Theatre Journal, Review of Research in Education, Journal of Dance Education, the Journal of Southeast Asian American Education & Advancement, and Arts Education Policy Review.
Currently, Maloney Leaf serves on the editorial board for Dance Education in Practice and is a member of the National Dance Education Organization's Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (JEDI) work group.
Maloney earned her PhD in curriculum & instruction from the University of Minnesota, her MFA in dance performance and choreography from the University of Colorado, and her BA in dance and English from Gustavus Adolphus College. She holds a Minnesota K-12 teaching license in dance and theatre.
