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Bridgewater College celebrates ASPIRE Week

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bridgewater collegeBridgewater College is recognizing academic achievement during a week of activities dedicated to showcasing excellence. ASPIRE (A Celebration of the Arts, Scholarship, Performance, Innovation and Research Excellence), will be held April 21 – May 2.

ASPIRE opens Thursday, April 21 with student research convocations sponsored by Alpha Chi, a national scholastic honor society, at 9:30 a.m. A second session will be held at 9:30 a.m. Tuesday, April 26. Both presentations will be in Cole Hall.

Cultural Studies student panels will present their research on Thursday, April 21 and Tuesday, April 26. Both sessions will be at 9:30 a.m. in the Boitnott Room.

The department of world languages and cultures will present a student panel at 9:30 a.m. Thursday, April 21 in the Spoerlein Lecture Hall in the McKinney Center for Science and Mathematics.

A Bridgewater College Faculty Scholarship Showcase will be held from 1 to 4 p.m. Friday, April 22, in the Boitnott Room.

A concert by the Bridgewater College Jazz Ensemble will be held at 3 p.m. Sunday, April 24, in Cole Hall. “The Best of the Big Band Era,” under the direction of Dr. Christine Carrillo, assistant professor of music and director of instrumental music, will feature the music of some of the leading composers and musicians in the 1930s and 1940s.

Bridgewater students will be featured during the performance. Sara Jean Forrenz, a junior music major from Virginia Beach, Va., will be featured on the clarinet on “Sing, Sing, Sing” by Louis Prima/Benny Goodman. Traci Sink, a senior music major fromSnow Camp, N.C., will serve as vocalist on Duke Ellington’s “Don’t Get Around Much Anymore.” Phillip Stone, a senior biology major from Linville, Va., will be the featured trombonist on “A Tribute to Tommy Dorsey.” Matthew Wampler, a physics and mathematics double major with a minor in music, from Nokesville, Va., will serve as piano accompanist for “Cashmere Cutie” by Billy Strayhorn.

A student poster session will be held from 5:30 – 6:30 p.m. Wednesday, April 27 in Nininger Hall.

A spring choral concert will be presented by the Bridgewater College Concert Choir and Chorale at 7:30 p.m. Friday, April 29, in the Carter Center for Worship and Music. “Let the Harps of Welcome Ring,” under the direction of Dr. John McCarty, assistant professor of music and director of choral music, and accompanied by Lacey Johnson, instructor of music, will feature pieces with texts and musical forms related to the idea of community.

Sink and Jonathon Wilson, a senior music major from Salem, Va., will serve as student conductors. Sink will direct “False Love,” the second movement from Sir Edward Elgar’s From the Bavarian Highlands and Wilson will conduct John Rutter’s arrangement of Black Sheep, a traditional American lullaby.

ASPIRE concludes with the Senior Art Thesis opening receptions and artists’ talks on Monday, May 2 from 5 – 8 p.m. Maps of the exhibition sites will be available at the Cleo Driver Miller Art Gallery located on the second floor of the Alexander Mack Memorial Library.

All ASPIRE events are free and open to the public.

Bridgewater College is a private, four-year liberal arts college, located in the Central Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. Founded in 1880, it was the state’s first private, coeducational college. Today, Bridgewater College is home to more than 1,800 undergraduate students.

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