Cate’s teaching at MIAD focuses on the relationship of a student’s movement life to both professional and personal concerns. In her movement-based course “Body/Space/Effort” students explore the roles that movement plays in cultural life; they expand their access to space and dynamics; and they articulate the relevance of their experience to their own art-making and to their perception of the work of others.

Her dance training includes degrees from UW-Madison, UW-Milwaukee, and certification in movement analysis from the Laban/Bartenieff Institute for Movement Study in New York. The work of Robert Ellis Dunn and Rudolf Laban have been major influences in her teaching and creative work. She founded the Department of Dance and Movement Studies at Alverno College in 1988, and has been presenting choreographic work in a variety of venues since 1981. In addition to MIAD, she also teaches in the Graduate Program in Dance Movement Therapy at Columbia College Chicago, and in the Dance Program at UW-Milwaukee. She also writes on dance for various publications, such as this article on "Vanguard Visions" from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.