Young Teacher Award
Nick Keelan, 1988
"Nick Keelan, few music educators can claim as you do the background of studio jazz musician, symphony member, public school teacher, and master of the dirt bike in the outback; and few musicians are equally at home, as you are, performing tuba in a marching band or conducting Elgar from a podium. These diverse experiences and talents serve you well as teacher, supervisor of teachers-to-be, conductor, and advisor. Your students find you a source of musical inspiration, and analytic, almost scientific, critic of their instrumental performance who has a special gift for matching solutions to problems, and a warm, open, and professional counselor. In your role as supervisor of student teachers, you display an ability to sort out the profound from the pedantic. You are a specialist in a discipline of specialties, but your comprehension is that of the liberated artist-performer.
Nick, we are delighted to honor you as an outstanding young teacher of the Lawrence faculty."
