Halle Sherman

When Halle Sherman (BAAS `22) accepted her Bachelor of Applied Arts and Sciences diploma onstage at the Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts, she saw her educational career come full circle. “The May 15 graduation happened in the theater where I did my last School of Pennsylvania Ballet performance,” she recalls. “I graduated in ballet there and now I’ve graduated from Penn there.”

Halle’s ballet education is what led her to Penn in the first place: As a student and then a young company dancer for Pennsylvania Ballet (now called Philadelphia Ballet), many of the dancers she looked up to were enrolled in the College of Liberal and Professional Studies Bachelor of Arts degree. “There’s no such thing as a dumb dancer. You have to be smart to be a dancer,” Halle observes. “So when I got the job that I wanted, I knew the next thing I wanted to do was go to Penn.” But when Halle moved to Florida to dance with the Sarasota Ballet, it was a strain to travel a thousand miles to attend classes on campus in the summer terms. Naturally, she jumped at the opportunity to transfer into Penn LPS Online’s Bachelor of Applied Arts and Sciences (BAAS), which allowed her to complete her degree online. “I thought, this is exactly what I need,” she reflects. “I was homeschooled, so I knew it would be a familiar format—all the expectations and the deadlines and the interactions, without having to be all together in one place. And I could accomplish everything I wanted much faster.”

Now a company dancer with Huntsville Ballet and an educator for a program called Discover Dance, Halle’s schedule is physically and intellectually demanding: Typically in the studio six days of week, she often has classes or rehearsals in the evening after a full day of practice. She completes her classwork whenever she can fit it in. “Most of my free time, or lack thereof, is used for school,” she laughs. “When I first started, it wasn't easy—but it was rewarding in the sense that the harder that I worked at it, the more I got out of it.”

When Halle transferred into the BAAS program, she knew immediately that she wanted to pursue the Physical and Life Sciences degree concentration. “Everyone expects me to choose something related to the arts or literature, and that just cannot be further from the truth for me,” she says. “I am drawn more to mathematical thinking, and I naturally gravitated towards studying things like the brain and how the brain works and why we do what we do on a daily basis.” In the course of her studies, Halle completed the requirements for the Certificate in Neuroscience, Certificate in Climate Change, and the Certificate in Applied Positive Psychology—which were awarded along with her bachelor’s degree. “What was so great about working both sides of my brain is that, when I got frustrated with science, I could set it down and go to the studio to dance. And when something in the studio wasn’t working for me, I could set that aside and work on my neuroscience and climate change courses,” she says. “Dance is my passion, and science is so enlightening and rewarding—both leave me feeling fulfilled and inspired.” Even so, she was surprised by how much she enjoyed the humanities coursework she completed to fulfill degree requirements. “I’ve taken a poetry class and a mythology class since deciding to swear off of arts and literature, and I actually fell in love with those two,” she adds.

As a student of applied positive psychology, Halle learned that one of her primary character strengths is love: “I go into everything in a very passionate, open-hearted way.” Her passion, sense of discovery, and hard work are all represented in her Senior Portfolio—which highlights her entire Penn journey, from the writing requirement she completed at the beginning of her Penn career to her confident analytical papers for online courses in mythology and ethics. “I find that I’m gravitating toward including work that I found enlightenment and passion in, not necessarily what’s perfect,” she explains. The broad-ranging showcase of Halle’s coursework also represents the breadth of possibilities open to her future. “I’m not sure what comes next after I retire from dancing somewhere along the line. I just want to use my degree in some way,” she muses.

Of course, Halle was already putting her degree to work even before she completed it. Her science background comes in handy for her work with Discover Dance, in which Halle and her fellow educators teach scientific concepts through movement: For example, she describes choreographing a dance sequence that represented the formation of a tornado, with her public school pupils playing the roles of warm air and cold air as they interact and form a cyclone. She also draws on positive psychology as both an educator and a performer: “We are a bunch of dancers in a room together for hours and hours, six days a week. There can be conflicts,” she laughs. “Looking to find everyone’s strengths and team-building has been excellent.”

“I’ve grown up with and through Penn,” concludes Halle. “I walk on campus and I feel at home. Even though I haven’t been attending classes on campus, I fit right in, because I can take away the knowledge Penn has given me and take it somewhere else. The confidence that I’ve gained in my personal and professional life have translated into confidence throughout my education.”