Jamal Douglas, a senior Acting major at Arcadia University and a resident of Laurel, Md., was awarded a Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival for Region II Certificate of Merit for Excellence in Ensemble Acting. Douglas was chosen for his part in the Arcadia University Theater production of Home, which was an invited production at the Region II festival on Jan. 14.

Douglas also was named an Irene Ryan Scholarship semi-finalist, and at the festival he was cast in the play reading of Terminal Condition as Carl. “The festival was one of the greatest experiences I have had since being at Arcadia,” Douglas said. “It showed me how much I have learned through the years and how much our program at Arcadia has to offer in the world of theater.”

In the fall of 2008, Douglas studied abroad in South Africa, where he performed a piece that he created with his peers in Cape Town. “The piece talked about self-identity within trying circumstances,” says Douglas. While in Cape Town, he also did community service teaching life skills at a girls’ shelter.

Upon graduation Douglas plans on staying in Philadelphia to pursue a career in acting while continuing to teach youth and teens in various communities, something he was involved in this past summer at Northwestern University, where he was a faculty associate for the National High School Institute for Theatre Arts (Cherubs) assisting in acting, voice and movement classes while teaching his own improvisation and hip hop dance course. He also traveled to New York and worked with Camp Our Time, a theatrical camp for kids who stutter.