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CORVALLIS - After a successful pilot program last year, Oregon State University's popular Jumpstart summer art program will formally add a teacher institute to this year's session.

Jumpstart is an accelerated pre-college visual arts program, offered to students ages 15-18 during the summer. The new Jumpstart Teacher Institute provides studio experience and theory-intensive workshops for K-12 teachers, according to program director John Maul, an associate professor of art at OSU. It is scheduled this summer from June 27 to July 1.

Applications for the teacher program are now being accepted. Information is available by calling the OSU Department of Art at 541-737-4745.

Maul said the university developed the institute in response to numerous requests from teachers who had heard of Jumpstart and "lamented that there wasn't a Jumpstart for teachers."

"The premise is simple," Maul said. "We want to bring these teachers - all of whom are artists, writers, or simply creative people - back into an environment where that's ALL they have to be: no curricula or lesson plans to write, no supplies to order, and no classrooms to manage. Our goal is to help them revitalize the creative drive that brought them to art or writing in the first place."

The institute also will present a concurrent lecture series, Maul said, that will include short seminars or presentations on everything from critique styles to teaching with film.

Coordinated by the Department of Art and the School of Education at OSU, the institute includes a studio component - a five-day intensive study with afternoons in the studio and opportunities for further work in the evenings. OSU faculty will serve as mentors, including Yuji Hiratsuka, Japanese woodcut; James Folts and Elizabeth Miller, non-silver photographic techniques; William Shumway, landscape painting; and Peter Sears, creative writing.

Tuition for the institute is $495, which includes art supplies, instruction and studio use. Teachers who wish to receive four hours of graduate credit from OSU pay $795. Housing options are available.

"It doesn't matter if you are a writing major who is teaching social studies, or a painter who coaches wrestling," Maul said. "The institute is a week in your life to get back to what inspires you as a creative person."