Current Appointment
Katy is an Assistant Professor of Theatre at the University of Northern Iowa in Cedar Falls. She is TheatreUNI’s primary acting instructor and intimacy choreographer, and she directs and coaches regularly in the mainstage season. She developed an online module to train TheatreUNI collaborators in current industry best practices and updates it annually.
Katy currently serves as the co-chair of the Performance Committee and will chair the College of Humanities, Arts, and Sciences Faculty Senate beginning in Fall 2026.
In 2026, Katy co-founded the Northern Iowa Shakespeare Festival with Crooked Path Classics. The festival includes a fully staged classical work as well as the UNI Summer Shakespeare Intensive, an accessibly priced summer training program for the Cedar Valley community. For NISF’s inaugural season, Katy served as the Director of Education & Outreach and starred as Rosalind in As You Like It.
TheatreUNI Connection
How did Katy get into the theatre in the first place? Why did she stick with it? In more ways than one, the answer to both of these questions is TheatreUNI.
Katy’s parents (Tim Slaven and Colette Ceilley-Slaven) met in the Strayer-Wood Theatre in the ’80s, and while he was attending grad school at UNI, her dad took her to see her first play when she was just two years old. This was the 1990 production of Treasure Island directed by Gretta Berghammer.
Katy later attended UNI for undergrad as a Theatre Performance Major, Music Minor, and Presidential Scholar, graduating with Honors with Distinction in May 2010. She returned to teach as an adjunct instructor in the theatre department from Spring 2017-Fall 2022 and began a full-time position on the tenure track in January 2023. Now, teaching in the same room where she took her first college acting class and living two doors down from where her mom grew up, Katy can think of no place she would rather be!
Katy looks forward to celebrating a full decade of teaching at UNI in January 2027 by directing Athena by Gracie Gardner as a co-produced tour with another one of her professional homes, Riverside Theatre in Iowa City.
Other Teaching Experience
Katy’s work in higher education includes classes, workshops, and productions at Florida Atlantic University, Coe College, Cornell College, Hawkeye College, and the University of Iowa. She has also taught numerous camps, classes, and workshops for youth and communities across Iowa and the US.
Credentials
Katy earned her MFA in Theatre Arts – Acting from Florida Atlantic University in 2015. She has completed the Advanced Plus level diploma and the Educator Advocate Program with Theatrical Intimacy Education, and she is a Certified Teacher of the Michael Chekhov Acting Technique through the Great Lakes Michael Chekhov Consortium in Kent, OH.
