I am pleased to announce the appointment of Dr. Karin Sehmann as Associate Chair in Music. Dr. Sehmann will remain coordinator of Graduate Studies, but will also serve the department with curriculum, assessment, and student issues. Her help to me and the department cannot go unnoticed. I’m very happy to be working with her in day to day administrative issues. Dr. Joe Van Fleet has accepted duties as assistant chair where he works with student organizations, publicity, recruiting, and archiving music performances. Jonathan has been a great addition to our office as well.

I am also pleased to announce the appointment of Laurie Choi, Lecturer in Piano Accompaniment. Laurie comes to us from Knoxville, TN and has been a part of our musical family for the past three years as a part-time instructor. Professor Choi teaches beginning class piano and will serve as a liaison with the federated music clubs and regional piano teachers.

Our enrollment is up with over 200 music majors. This increase is largely due to incredible recruiting efforts of our faculty, especially in orchestral studies. We also have been supported throughout the university community in scholarships with an increase of over 100% since Fall of 1999. We thank our alumni whom continue to support our efforts in so many ways.

The 2003-04 year was a very positive performance year for our ensembles with five groups performing at national and international conferences. We continue to provide exciting performance options for our students and faculty, and have been successful in retaining funds for these important and vital performance trips. Our faculty ensembles are always willing to perform at local and regional school programs and several faculty conduct master classes throughout the Commonwealth and beyond. Our classrooms have been up dated with state-of-the-art technology. We added a Smart room in the Robert Hartwell rehearsal hall and have added internet capabilities in all of the classrooms. Most recently our music lab has been upgraded with new computer stations and we will offer Film Scoring as a requirement to the Music Merchandising program this Spring.

Currently, we are working with the College of Business and Technology to offer a degree program in Music Marketing and Music Management. Students in this program will receive a BA in Business, but will take seven of our music merchandising courses. We hope to attract students whom are interested in the music business area, but whom do not necessarily perform on a major instrument. This type of study works very well at many institutions and we will welcome the challenges of teaching students outside of our major.

Please visit our web page, www.music.eku.edu for additional information about our faculty, programs, and ensembles. You are more than welcome to visit campus and offer suggestions for upcoming events. We love our Alumni and hope that you feel welcome and appreciated.