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This story is part of the Pathways to Placement series, which highlights UNT faculty and staff’s hard work to prepare students in the creative arts for professional success.

The UNT dance program has brought back its bachelor’s degree, with new curriculum focused on students’ professional development and a continued commitment to producing adaptable and multi-talented graduates.

The previous undergraduate dance major stopped accepting new students in 2022 and the corresponding minor closed this spring. Dance faculty didn’t give up, however.

“What really keeps us going is the incredible group of students who come in every semester,” full-time dance lecturer Reyna Mondragon said. “Their energy, creativity, and passion inspire us to keep growing, evolving, and finding new ways to move the world of dance forward.”

In fall 2026, UNT’s Department of Dance and Theatre launched a bachelor’s program in theatre with a concentration in dance. It also offers four new dance certificates: studio teaching, choreography and performance, dance wellness and team performance.

Each certificate takes 15 hours of coursework to complete. The department aims to show students the numerous ways they can work in the field of dance with these specialized tracks.

"Students come to dance with a wide range of interests and aspirations,” said Whitney Geldon, an advisor, lecturer, and head of dance. “We want to give students the agency to shape an education that prepares them for multiple pathways in the field, whether they envision careers in performance, choreography, education, arts administration, wellness or another area of dance.”

The new dance programs come with expanded curriculum, including dance and drill, commercial dance, and strength and conditioning for performance.

The department now also offers an arts entrepreneurship class, open to non-dance majors as well. It highlights creative research, artist branding and marketing, funding proposals and grant writing, giving and taking critical feedback, founding a studio or company, and more.

“The new curriculum is really focused on building adaptability within our students,” Mondragon said. “We prepare our students to articulate what it is they do, how they do it, and the different avenues they can explore with the degree, not just focused on dance.”

In the program’s capstone class, students are responsible for designing the look of their show, “to treat it as real as possible,” Mondragon said. They collaborate with set, lighting and costume designers from UNT’s theatre program.

Every year, the dance program hosts a career day where students can participate in mock auditions and interviews. A panel of artists discuss what they’ve done with their dance degree, representing a wide variety of professions like educators, nonprofit founders and yoga instructors.

The department also hosts events for middle and high school students, the American College Dance Association conference, and the Texas Dance Improvisation Festival. Students work as event coordinators, instructors, stage managers, production designers, and more.

“We get offered so many networking opportunities throughout the year and I have gained so many resources,” said Ava Townsley, who graduated with a bachelor’s degree in dance in fall 2025. “We have people come in from the Dallas Mavericks’ dance team and guest choreographers who’ve worked with Ariana Grande.”