Lawrence Today magazine, Summer 2006
Professor of Music Rick Bjella has been awarded the 2006 Hanns
Kretzschmar Award for Excellence in the Arts for his 20 years as artistic director of Appleton’s
White Heron Chorale, a 65-member mixed-voice community choir of volunteer singers.
The Chorale celebrated Bjella’s anniversary as its conductor with a concert
of his favorite choral pieces.
Krystle
Maczka, ’09 (pictured), in March, was invited to play the dedicatory
recital for a new piano in the Great Hall of the William
J. Clinton Presidential Center in Little Rock,
Arkansas. The piano performance major from El Dorado, Arkansas, had
the honor of being the first to perform on a new seven-foot Steinway grand
piano, a gift
to the Clinton Foundation.
Karen Nordell, associate professor of chemistry, has been
appointed director of the Pew Midstates
Science and Mathematics Consortium,
which consists of ten liberal arts colleges and two research universities.
Goals of the organization include promoting faculty collaboration, improving
undergraduate science and mathematics education, and assisting faculty and
student research at member institutions.
Three Lawrence students won honors at the 2006 Midwest Horn Workshop, a regional
workshop of the International Horn Society. Dan Severson, ’09, earned
first-place honors in the low horn orchestral excerpts competition. Anna
Suechting, ’08,
and Karen Oliver, ’09, received second-place recognition in the solo
horn and high horn orchestral excerpts competitions, respectively.
Leila
Sahar, ’08, registered a perfect score en route
to earning an “outstanding
witness” award for Lawrence University’s mock trial team (pictured)
at the national tournament in March. She was one of six students representing
the
college at the American Mock Trial Association’s 48-team national
tournament. Lawrence, in just its second year of mock-trial competition, qualified
for the national tournament after placing seventh among 20 teams at the regional
tournament in mid-February.
Michael Truesdell, ’06, and alumna Sara Kind, ’05, shared
top honors at the 12th annual Neale-Silva Young Artists competition sponsored
by Wisconsin Public Radio in March. Truesdell, a percussionist, and Kind, a
saxophonist, were named two of the five winners. It was the sixth time in the
past nine years that Lawrence
music students have won or shared top honors in the Neale-Silva. In December,
Kind had taken top honors in the 20th Annual Concord Chamber Orchestra’s
concerto competition, in which pianist Alvina Tan, ’06, was
named runner-up.