Member, Commission on Accreditation
Reelected March 2022; term ends March 2025
Shelly Elman is Chair of the Theatre Department at the University of West Georgia (UWG). Prior to her appointment as Chair, she served as Director of Theatre at UWG for ten years. She has directed over 20 productions at UWG.
Professor Elman has served as Chair of the Board of Directors of Reforming Arts, a small non-profit organization that brings higher education in the arts and humanities to the inmates in Lee Arrendale State Prison, a maximum-security facility for women in north Georgia. As part of her work with Reforming Arts, she led two groups of returned citizens to create plays about their experiences: Walking Barefoot in the Grass and It Makes Me Think: Our Stories About Reentry. Both plays have toured to colleges and universities in Georgia and Tennessee.
Professor Elman served as the Southeastern regional chair for the Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival from 2009–2012, for which she received the Kennedy Center Golden Medallion in 2013.
Professor Elman has served NAST as Chair of the Committee on Nominations. She was first elected to the Commission on Accreditation in 2019.
She earned a Master of Fine Arts degree from Wayne State University, and a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from Illinois Wesleyan University.
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Updated April 2022