Shannon McCue is an arts administrator, educator, and professional violist. She is currently the Assistant Director of the Collaborative Arts Research Initiative (CARI) at The University of Alabama. CARI is an interdisciplinary, arts-focused research engine driven by the interests of faculty from across the University. By facilitating collaborations across disciplines, CARI maximizes the impact of faculty arts research, while enriching the University, local, and regional communities. Prior to that, she served as Education Director at the Arts & Humanities Council of Tuscaloosa, where she managed all of the organization’s education initiatives in a variety of artistic disciplines, including the national Poetry Out Loud program, the Visual Art Achievement Award Program, the Spectra Partners in the Arts guide – which pairs schools seeking arts programs with organizations and teaching artists providing them, and a partnership with the City of Northport to oversee arts education programming in six elementary schools. Through the Arts Council, she also led the West Alabama Arts Education Collaborative, which is part of a state legislature-funded collective impact initiative called the Amp Up Arts. The goal of Amp Up Arts is to provide high quality arts education programs to all public school students in Alabama. Shannon worked with schools, teaching artists, community arts organizations, and legislators to start innovative arts programs in West Alabama, and provide professional development for teachers and teaching artists.