In the spring of 2025, Dr. David Tahere, professor of music and theater at Covenant College, announced he would be leaving his position to pursue other professional opportunities.
The start of this semester marks the first full academic year without him since 2012, and many theater students are feeling a sense of déjà vu. Tahere is the second theater professor to leave Covenant since the theater major was officially dissolved in 2024 with longtime professor Claire Slavosky having left the year prior. Camille Hallstrom is now the only full-time theater professor at the college.
For sophomore Emma Eastman, theater was a huge part of her decision to come to Covenant.
“The theater major when I first signed up for Covenant,” Eastman remarks, “… was an option that you could check off on the little online form that we did. So I had checked that off, and I was, technically, a theater major going in.” Eastman had been awarded the theater scholarship and was greatly looking forward to earning a degree in theater from Covenant.
It wasn’t until her first week at school that a friend on campus informed her that the theater major was no longer being offered. “I wasn’t told by any staff or anyone for a while,” Eastman recalls. After initiating a conversation with her advisor, she was officially informed that she could not pursue theater as a major.
“My entire life, I expected to be a theater major. So coming in and having that changed so quickly, it made me think about transferring.”
However, it was Professor Tahere that made her stay.
“He was genuinely wonderful,” says Eastman, “I had a really hard first semester and freshman year in general, with my health and with my theater department job. He was there throughout the whole thing, and he was such a wonderful advisor and supporter.”
Eastman was devastated to learn he was leaving, but she wasn’t the only one affected by this loss.
Mara Kate Barker, a sophomore living on The Haven, had also originally applied to Covenant as a theater major before finding out about the change at scholarship weekend.
“I was really sad when they took the major away,” says Barker, “I tell myself that I am a theater major in disguise as an English major, so a lot of the work I do in my English classes I tie back to theater as much as possible.”
Both Eastman and Barker think that Christians are needed in theater.
“Theater and film, it needs Christians in it right now,” Eastman says, “So taking that away because it’s not business, or it’s not profitable, it’s not helping our Christian mission. We have people here in America that really need to hear the Gospel, especially in the arts community.”
Eastman dropped her theater minor two and a half weeks in to her freshmen year, but Barker is continuing to stick it out.
“I hope that in a few years, maybe after I’m gone, they will bring the theater major back. While I’m here in the theater program, I am going to fight to bring it back,” says Barker.
In the midst of the change and uncertainty, the school is making strides to keep the program afloat with the hire of adjunct professor of theater Frank Mihelich and recent renovations to Sanderson 215, the primary performing space for theater productions.
Barker says, “I have a lot of hope for the theater program. I think it could turn into a really good thing.”