March 2005
It had been 20 years since I had been to New York City—that's what a provincial I am! But the four days that Mary Ellen and I spent there in January with members of our Schreiner University Choir, its director Michael Kahl, and Pat and Tom Browne were golden.
Our group of 25 made that journey to participate in a concert performance of John Rutter's“Mass for the Children” at Carnegie Hall, along with a dozen other choirs from across the country.
The week preceding the trip included nightly practices on campus to ensure that we knew the notes before departing. Three intensive rehearsal sessions under the directorship of Jonathan Willcocks in New York enabled some 250-plus of us to shape that basic knowledge into a true musical experience.
The result was a moving performance in the incomparable Carnegie Hall setting, the power of which we all felt. If you have not already encountered it, you may want to check our website and read Liz Butts' informative journal of the experience, which you can find by digging back through the news stories on the home page. [ Click here to read the online travel journal ]What is the value of an experience like this? Although it varies by individual, I believe that it ultimately is beyond calculation. For core members of our choir, it means the opportunity to benefit from experience with a conductor of international reputation, to work intensively for a standard of excellence, and to enjoy the benefit of achieving that goal. You don't address rehearsals and performances on campus the same way afterward.
A small university like Schreiner has an obligation as a place of learning to enlarge its students' horizons. Small size should promote mentoring, relationships, and community, but it must not become an excuse for insularity. How do you provide opportunities for expansion? In a variety of ways. Of course, any form of study opens one's intellect to new horizons. The global awareness course in our core curriculum makes a special contribution, as will the new international relations concentration being developed currently. The array of speakers brought to campus adds another dimension.
But experience that literally takes one away from the familiar campus has particular capacity to expand one's perspective. When a group of our business students competes against peers from other colleges in a Business Ethics Match, that expansion occurs. When our Hatton W. Sumners Scholars converse with international leaders, it happens. When our science students make presentations of their research at professional meetings or our literature
students read their papers, the process is occurring. When, increasingly, students learn in another country, whether for two weeks or a full semester, the intellectual growth is fostered. So our Schreiner University Choir members have added one more tool to the educational kit in their New York experience, and we celebrate their accomplishment. ʼ
