Alison Van Dyke, retired senior lecturer of performing and media arts at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, passed away on October 5 while on a trip to London. She was 79 years old.
Van Dyke began her career at Cornell in 1977 as a part-time lecturer and became full-time the following year. In 1985, she was promoted to senior lecturer and held that position until her retirement in 2014. Her teaching interests included advanced acting techniques and performance speech and dialects. In addition to teaching, she became director of undergraduate services for all department majors in 2010. In 2011, van Dyke served as co-chair of the committee that planned the department’s new curriculum. In 2012, the College of Arts and Sciences awarded her the Robert A. and Donna B. Paul Academic Advising Award.
In addition to her teaching and advising roles, Van Dyke served on the board for the Cornell Prison Educational Program. In 2011, she became a facilitator with the Phoenix Players Theatre Group at the Auburn Correctional Facility. She considered the prison theatre group to be one of the most important things in her life and attended their weekly meetings once she retired from Cornell.