• Dr. Don Ambrose, professor of graduate education, published the article “Capitalizing on Cognitive Diversity along Interdisciplinary Desire Lines” in the “Conceptual Foundations” newsletter of the National Association for Gifted Children. He presented a keynote paper “Aspirations and Cognitively Diverse Critical Communities in a Context of Dynamic Globalization" on April 13 for the Global Learning in Gifted Education Symposium in Wichita, KS. He also published the winter and spring issues as editor of the national refereed journal, "Roeper Review," which addresses giftedness, talent development, and other aspects of high ability.
• Elem Eley, professor of voice/piano at Westminster Choir College, performed as a soloist in “Die erste Walpurgisnacht” by Mendelssohn and “Carmina Burana” by Orff with the St. Cecelia Chorus and Orchestra at Carnegie Hall in New York City on May 4. He also performed as a soloist in “Te Deum” by Bruckner with the New Jersey Youth Symphony at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center in Newark on June 3, and sang the role of James Joyce in “The Antient Concert,” by Daron Hagen and Paul Muldoon in the chamber opera’s June 16 world premiere at Symphony Space in New York City.
• Dr. Ronald A. Hemmel, F.A.G.O., associate professor of music theory and composition and artistic director of the Music Computing Center at Westminster Choir College of Rider University, attended the premier performance of his composition, Var.Zip,” on May 31. The piece was commissioned and performed by the Montgomery High School Concert Band, conducted by Kawilka Kahalahoe. It uses zip codes in several variations (hence, the title) to create melodic, harmonic and rhythmic elements.
• Dr. Marvin Keenze, professor of voice/piano at Westminster Choir College of Rider University, visited Croatia and Ukraine May 18 through 30, where he gave master classes and lectures at the Academy of Music in Zagreb and Lviv. He also presented a class for the Voice Foundation Symposium on the Professional Voice in Philadelphia. This month, he will coordinate the New York Singing Teachers Association’s comparative pedagogy course. In August, he will teach at the British Voice Teachers Association’s Teachers Training program near Birmingham.
• Dr. Elizabeth Scheiber, assistant professor of French and Italian, has published an article and presented papers at two international conferences this spring. Her article on Primo Levi entitled “Demeter at Auschwitz: Use of Mythology in ‘Il sistema periodico’” will be appearing in the next issue of “Forum Italicum,” a major peer-reviewed journal of Italian culture and literature. On March 30, she spoke on the poetry of Senegalese author Leopold Sedar Senghor at the conference “Literature and the Arts in Senegal” at Indiana University in Bloomington, IN. On April 26, she presented a paper on Primo Levi’s short stories at the conference “Answering Auschwitz: Primo Levi’s Science and Humanism After the Fall” at Hofstra University in Hempstead, NY.
• Charlotte Surkin, adjunct assistant professor in voice at Westminster Choir College, sang a demo recording of a world premiere Broadway work, “Here on this Hill,” by Marshall Coid on June 18. Recently, she along with Dr. Robert Sataloff, chairman of the Department of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery and associate dean at Drexel University College of Medicine in Philadelphia, PA, and chair of the Philadelphia Voice Center; and Dr. Anthony Jahn, director of otolaryngology at St. Luke’s Roosevelt Hospital in New York and adjunct professor of voice pedagogy at Westminster, were interviewed in the May issue of ENToday, an otolaryngologist’s magazine, in an article titled, “Well Tuned: Maintenance of the Professional Voice.”

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