This time next year, Distinguished Artist Professor Marilyn Shrude will likely not be thinking of class schedules or her duties as chair of the musicology/composition/theory department. Instead, thanks to support from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, she expects to be deeply immersed in writing music.

Shrude has been named a 2011 Guggenheim Fellow. Designed to help nurture scholarship or creative activity, the prestigious awards are “intended for scholars or artists who have already demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the arts,” according to the foundation.

Shrude personifies that description. Her compositions have been performed across the United States, in Europe and in Asia, and she has been a guest artist at festivals around the world. Nearly 20 of her compositions have been recorded on various labels.

Guggenheim Fellows are chosen through a rigorous and highly competitive application process that this year yielded 180 fellowships from about 3,000 applications.

Only about 10 fellows were chosen in the music composition category — not all in academia, and about half in jazz. Shrude’s fellow winners include composers from Juilliard, Harvard and New York University. “It’s nice to have Bowling Green State University represented among institutions like these,” she said.

The “planets aligned” for Shrude this time, she said. She had already planned to take a faculty improvement leave next year to write two commissioned compositions. Being free of administrative and teaching duties “is a different mode of operation,” she said. “It lets my imaginative side come out.”

For more information you can read this article, published by the American Composers Alliance.

(Submitted by Susan Knapp)

Jeffrey Showell

Dr. Jeffrey Showell, a professor and director of the School of Music at James Madison University, has been appointed the next dean of the College of Musical Arts. Dr. Kenneth Borland, senior vice president for academic affairs and provost, made the announcement today (March 28) following a national search. Showell’s appointment becomes effective June 30.

“Dr. Showell has the passion, intellect, gifts and outstanding leadership experience to bring the College of Musical Arts into a well-deserved place of national prominence,” Borland said of Showell.

Showell holds bachelor’s and master’s of music degrees from the Eastman School of Music and a master and doctorate of musical arts from Yale University.

As director of the School of Music at JMU, he oversees 45 full-time and 20 part-time faculty members and 450 majors. In the fall of 2009 he worked to create the Harlem Symphony Initiative, a reciprocal exchange of master classes and recitals by JMU faculty and symphony members. JMU also will become the summer home of the symphony.

While at James Madison, Showell was involved with the design, programming, construction and fund-raising for a new, 175,000-square-foot performing arts center that opened in May of 2010, and helped secure $1 million in private donations to help JMU become the first All-Steinway School in Virginia.

For nine years he’s been an Accreditation Visitor for the National Association of Schools of Music (NASM), having made accreditation visits to about 15 universities. For the last three years, he’s also been a member of the NASM central accreditation commission.

Before becoming an administrator, Showell was an accomplished violist. He served for eight years as the principal violist for the Tucson Symphony Orchestra, was a soloist with the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra and violist in the Rymour String Quartet.

“I am deeply honored by the opportunity to step into Richard Kennell’s large shoes as dean of the BGSU College of Musical Arts, to continue his work in elevating the national profile of this extraordinary College,” Showell said.

(Submitted by Susan Knapp)