A lifelong love of learning, science, and dance coalesced when Laurel Shastri (MS in Geology) became a teaching artist twenty-five years ago. Her creative mission to integrate dance authentically yielded a number of unique units, including ‘The Scientific Dancer’, ‘Meaningful Movement’, and ‘DANCE as ACTIVism.’ Her work is featured in the college text ‘Creating Meaning Through Literature and the Arts,’ by Claudia Cornett. She inspired thousands of students through Arts Council Santa Cruz County Artist-Teacher Partnership, Montalvo Teaching Artist Program, and Tennessee Art Commission arts education programs. She presented well-received, interactive workshops for Monterey Bay Area Math Project, Marion Cilker Conference for the Arts in Education, National Association for State Arts Agencies, and Southeast Center for Education in the Arts.  At Ballet Tennessee, she served as Associate Director, dancer, faculty, arts education coordinator, and grant writer, where she worked closely on the model Dance Alive and Talent Identification Programs. Prior to that she was project geologist and chemical technician for environmental firms at Los Alamos National Laboratory. She was resident dancer at the Djerassi Artist Residency Program’s Scientific Delirium Madness II in 2015 and recipient of Ballet Tennessee’s 2018 Dance Alive Legacy Award. She is currently faculty of Dancenter and performs with MoveSpeakSpin in Santa Cruz, California.