Marissa Nesbit

Dr. Marissa Nesbit is deeply committed to the idea that all children should have the opportunity to attain an excellent dance education centered in the arts. Named as 2024 Outstanding Dance Educator in Higher Education by the National Dance Education Organization, Dr. Nesbit’s approach to teaching centers the meaning that students create through encounters with creative practices in a dynamic and connected classroom community. As Assistant Professor and Dance Education Coordinator at UNC Charlotte, Dr. Nesbit supports aspiring dance educators to craft rigorous and engaging learning experiences that immerse their students in the creative process. Her teaching includes Dance Improvisation, Elementary and Secondary Methods in Dance Education, and Dance Curriculum Design. She has also served as a Seminar Leader for the Charlotte Teachers Institute, supporting local educators across grades and content areas to integrate movement and embodied learning into their curricula as has taught as guest faculty in the Master of Arts in Dance Education program at UNC Greensboro. 

As a researcher, Dr. Nesbit engages in qualitative research projects that investigate aspects of dance curriculum and pedagogy in K12 contexts. Her current projects include an investigation of dance educators’ assessment practices in middle and high school settings, explorations of the role of metaphor in dance curriculum, construction of curriculum practices that integrate dance with social emotional learning, and explorations of dance literacy through the Language of Dance. She frequently collaborates with students on projects and is pleased to have co-authored and co-presented work with many UNC Charlotte undergraduates and alumni. 

Dr. Nesbit’s work has been published in Research in Dance Education, the Journal of Dance Education, and Dance Education in Practice. She has several chapters in the Ethical Dilemmas in Dance Education: Case Studies in Humanizing Dance Pedagogy (2020) edited by Doug Risner and Karen Schupp, and descriptions of her elementary and secondary dance education methods courses appear as a case study in Performing Arts As High-Impact Practice (2018) edited by Michelle Hayford and Susan Kattwinkel. Dr. Nesbit is a frequent presenter at national and international conferences including the National Dance Education Organization and dance and the Child, international, and she holds Master Practitioner certification through the Language of Dance Center. 

Dr. Nesbit is an active member of the dance education community in North Carolina, having served on the board of directors for the North Carolina Dance Education Organization for many years and coordinated five statewide conferences as Vice President for Professional Development. She has served as a member of the Dance Standards Writing Team for the new NC Arts Education Standards, contributing to the work that will guide curriculum in dance programs across the state. 

Dr. Nesbit is influenced by a widely varied academic background that contributes to her understanding of dance as deeply intertwined with other academic, artistic, and life pursuits. After completing her undergraduate degree in psychobiology at Pitzer College, she worked as a special education teacher before returning to school to complete her MFA in dance at Texas Woman’s University. Through work with several arts education programs she found her calling as a dance educator and further developed her interest in teacher professional development as Director of Dance Education at the Southeast Center for Education in the Arts at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. A desire to deeply investigate dance curriculum led to her Ph.D. research in Art Education, where she was awarded the Manuel Barkan Dissertation Fellowship at The Ohio State University.

Originally from San Antonio, Texas, Dr. Nesbit is thrilled to make North Carolina her second home and to continue the legacy of outstanding dance education in our region.