Young Teacher Award
Bridget-Michaele Reischl, 1994
"Bridget Reischl, what you do as a teacher at Lawrence is more readily visible and subject to criticism than the teaching of all but a few of your colleagues on the faculty. Every performance of the Lawrence Symphony Orchestra is a demonstration of your work, a public examination of how you are doing in teaching a large group of students to perform individually and together, even of your ability to get non-musicians to keep a beat in Commencement Concert encores. For you, then, every listener in the chapel is a potential critic; and the critics have been mightily impressed!
Your colleagues in the Conservatory are unanimous in their praise for the standards of excellence you have established for Lawrence Symphony musicians. Gifted artists themselves, they are uniquely aware of the dedication and skill you bring to the podium. Your colleagues in the rest of the faculty, gifted teachers in their own fields, admire the way you have instilled a quest for excellence among the students you direct. Those students report how quickly and clearly you establish your expectation that they will do their best, and then celebrate how effectively you guide them in achieving that level of performance. All of them are challenged by the high goals you set for them and yourself.
In describing you, most of the musicians you conduct sooner or later rely on the words 'demanding' and 'inspiring.' Those attributes are used in tandem, never separately. It is because you have convinced students that with effort they can do what you ask of them, because they and we know how completely you dedicate yourself to their accomplishments, and because this community has benefited so widely and so obviously from what they have achieved and performed under your baton, that we are pleased to recognize you with the Young Teacher Award for 1994."
