Yale Curriculum Initiative The Shen Family Foundation has provided the funding for the Shen Curriculum for Musical Theater at Yale University since the program's inception in 2005. The curriculum offers accredited courses that include musical theater composition, musical theater libretto and lyric writing, history of American musical theater, collaboration in musical theater performance, and "Stephen Sondheim & The American Musical Theater Tradition." The curriculum is administered by the Department of Music, with some courses cross-listed by the Department of Theater Studies and the Yale School of Drama. Shen faculty members are scholars and professional composers, directors, lyricists, librettists, directors and performers. The program director of the curriculum is Daniel Egan, who is joined by Annette Jolles, Michael Korie, Joshua Rosenblum, Marsha Norman, Jeanine Tesori and Maria-Christina Oliveras as instructors for 2019-2020. Past instructors include: Victoria Clark, Emily Coates, Joel Fram, Scott Frankel, Andrew Gerle, Ricky Ian Gordon, Jeffrey Klitz, Tina Landau, Nancy Opel, Lonny Price, Rachel Schienkin, Vicki Shaghoian, Joseph Thalken, Richard Pearson Thomas and Anne Tofflemire. A flourishing extracurricular program led by the weekly "Friday @ Five" series offers links between the study of musical theater in academe and how musical theater is created and practiced in the field. Illustrious guest artists take the train up from New York on Fridays to conduct master classes in performance and critique new composition. The program is further supplemented by an intensive workshop and internship program awarded each year by Signature Theatre to two students from the Shen Curriculum for Music Theater: one to a current senior and one to a recent graduate of the program. (See description of "Signature Theatre/Yale Composer Partnership" under the Signature Theatre tab of this website.) A principal goal of the curriculum, besides developing basic knowledge and skills, is to encourage its students to challenge both their own creative limits and the boundaries of musical theater convention in their approach to musical composition, lyric and book writing, direction and performance. Additional information can be found through the following links: http://theaterstudies.yale.edu/dance-studies-yale/shen-curriculum-musical-theater http://news.yale.edu/2016/01/12/shen-curriculum-musical-theater-celebrates-its-10th-year