Rooth Varland has been appointed head of the Department of Theatre Arts. An associate professor and costume designer for Little Country Theatre, Varland earned a Master of Fine Arts in theatre design from Northwestern University.
“Rooth has been serving as coordinator of theatre for the past several years and has done an outstanding job of nurturing the program in its academic and performance aspects,” said John Miller, director of the Division of Fine Arts.
Varland joined NDSU in 2000. She was previously an associate professor of theatre at the University of Mississippi. In 2003, she received the Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival’s fellowship for designers. In 1995, Varland was a National Endowment for the Humanities fellow at the Center for 20th Century Studies, where she studied postmodern performance theory with Herbert Blau, co-founder of The Actor’s Workshop.
Varland also has been the costume designer for the Wolf Trap/National Symphony Orchestra’s past two summer opera productions.
NDSU is recognized as one of the nation's top 108 public and private universities by the Carnegie Commission on Higher Education.