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Bridgewater College celebrates Founder’s Day on April 7

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bridgewaterBridgewater College will celebrate 135 years of its founding on Tuesday, April 7, presenting three awards during the 11 a.m. convocation in Nininger Hall.

President David W. Bushman will recognize three faculty members for excellence in teaching and scholarship.

Dr. Larry C. Taylor, assistant professor of music and department chair, will receive the Faculty Scholarship Award; Dr. Julia Centurion-Morton, an associate professor of Spanish and chair of the department of world languages and cultures will receive the Martha B. Thornton Faculty Recognition Award; and Dr. Brandon D. Marsh, an assistant professor of history, will receive the Ben and Janice Wade Outstanding Teaching Award.

The Founder’s Day observance at Bridgewater commemorates the April 3, 1854, birth of Flory, who at age 26 began a new school at Spring Creek in Rockingham County in 1880. The school, first known as Spring Creek Normal School, moved to Bridgewater two years later and changed its name to Bridgewater College on July 12, 1889.

 

About the honorees

Dr. Larry C. Taylor

Dr. Larry Taylor didn’t become a college professor because it was a career goal; he just didn’t want the conversations about music to stop.

Taylor, a native of Connecticut, is associate professor of music at Bridgewater where he has taught piano, organ, music theory and history since 2003. He is also department chair. Taylor said that when he studied music as a college student, he was fortunate to have long, one-on-one sessions with his teachers, talking about music.

“I think I ended up a college teacher because I didn’t want the conversations about music to stop,” said Taylor, who holds a doctor of musical arts degree in organ from the University of Cincinnati. “As a teacher, now I’m the one with more experience or background, but I still find it just as exciting to talk to my students about Bach and Beethoven as I did talking about them to my teachers.”

Teaching, of course, is only one of the ways in which Taylor shares his enthusiasm for music. For most of his professional life, Taylor has involved himself in levels of research and scholarship that have not only communicated the intellectual elements of music to a diverse audience, but have also “brought the house down,” so to speak. As a composer and performer, he is a one-man scholarship center.

“Some of my most rewarding experiences as a composer have been my work with librettist Tom Noe,” said Taylor. “We have composed two operas together: a one-woman opera based on the life of Marie Curie, and a chamber opera based on the myth of Eros and Psyche. Some composers seem most inspired by abstract musical ideas while others are more inspired by texts. I think I fall into the latter category. A good poem or story gets my musical brain working.”

Some of Taylor’s most popular scholarship has put him squarely at the keyboard in front of live, very enthusiastic audiences. His organ accompaniments to the silent films of Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin have drawn overflow audiences that include students who have never heard of these masters of film comedy. Taylor’s meticulous research into the music he uses for each moment of the films, delivered with panache and an unerring sense of timing, have brought boisterous, standing ovations at the conclusion of movies made nearly a century ago. Taylor said he soon hopes to have accompaniments for all of Keaton’s films.

Taylor also concertizes extensively in a wide variety of venues.

“As a performer I have tried to do at least one full program every year. The program I am proudest of was my ‘Eclectic Keyboard Concert,’ which had classical piano music, baroque keyboard music, transcriptions of orchestra music, organ music, popular music, and some crazy avant-garde pieces. I am a great believer in variety in my programming, and I try to find something new to do in every concert. I can’t resist talking about the pieces I play, and so my programs usually include some commentary.”

Conversation. Always conversation.

Taylor lives in Harrisonburg, Va., with his wife, Mary Jean Speare.

 

Dr. Julia Centurion-Morton

The Martha B. Thornton Faculty Recognition Award honors faculty who “provide caring concern for students well beyond the role as teacher.” Exemplifying that maxim is Dr. Julia Centurion-Morton, an associate professor of Spanish and chair of the department of world languages and cultures.  She has taught language courses and Latin American literature and culture at Bridgewater since 2003. Her experiences as a student in her native Peru and, later, in the United States, sensitized her to the emotional and educational needs of her students.

It began when she observed her teacher father – a man whose respect for his indigenous students sharply contrasted with the way students in her strict Catholic school were treated. There, self-expression and individuality were denied, and racial and social biases abounded. As an exchange student to the U.S., she noticed that assumptions were sometimes made about the intelligence and character of international students. A counselor even advised her that she did not belong in the university. She ignored the advice and graduated from Georgetown University with honors and a doctoral degree.

“These experiences are the challenges that led me to my philosophy of teaching,” said Morton. “First, I believe that students should express themselves without fear of criticism, prejudice or ridicule. In my beginning Spanish classes, I encourage students to share their opinions. Their fear of being laughed at because of language challenges are minimized when I tell them anecdotes about my own experiences learning English. Sharing these stories reassures them and shows them that barriers may be overcome by tenacity, perseverance and humor.”

This environment facilitates interaction with students on personal and intellectual levels and creates “a real dialogue and equal relationship.” Morton believes that each class is unique and has its own personality, factors that determine the techniques and strategies she uses. She said she sees her classes as a microcosm of the world, where a diversity of people with different perspectives exists.

“Teaching is one of the most gratifying professions one can pursue,” she said. “It allows you to open the minds of individuals to new things and to assist them in using this information to enrich their lives. I tell my students that the knowledge one receives in school is only a minimal part of what will determine one’s success. Human interaction and communication are extremely important to the success of any person.”

Morton observes that it’s been a long road from Catholic school in Peru to Bridgewater College, and that through her 30 years of teaching her mission has been to create a class environment conducive to learning, respect, cultural awareness and social consciousness.

 

Dr. Brandon D. Marsh

There is perhaps no better way to describe the teaching philosophy of the recipient of the 2015 Ben and Janice Wade Outstanding Teaching Award than to quote assistant professor of history Dr. Brandon Marsh directly: “I view teaching as a holistic endeavor that includes classroom instruction, a robust scholarly research agenda that complements my teaching and service that is specifically student centered. For me, no component of my career can be separated from the work I do with our undergraduates.”

Marsh, who originally hails from Vashon Island, Washington, and holds a doctorate in British Imperial history from The University of Texas at Austin, has taught at Bridgewater College since 2009. He is the author of the recently released Ramparts of Empire: British Imperialism and India’s Afghan Frontier, 1918-1948.

Within the classroom he creates a rigorous and comprehensively academic experience for his students that challenges their ingrained assumptions and fosters thoughtfulness through the study of history. For Marsh, this approach represents the very core of a liberal arts education. “I teach my courses in a way that emphasizes the need to understand context and build empathy when attempting to comprehend the human experience. History is about people, and using evidence to try to understand why people, either as individuals, or as a group, embark on a particular course of action. It is not only helps us try to make sense of a chaotic world, but also provides an important tool for life.”

While teaching courses, Marsh stresses the need to examine the past on its own terms, and conveys the feeling for an era and its people through lecture, various forms of media, analysis of primary source documents, and in-depth, multiple draft, primary source driven research papers. And yet, as labor intensive as his classes are, he also works hard to make history fun and entertaining. He remarks that the past, and the people that inhabited it, are “endlessly fascinating.” Along with this he often assigns the most-up-to date popular and academic scholarship to his classes in order to “bring the world of high scholarship to the students, help them understand it and become part of an exciting global conversation.”

His goal is to help students develop their own voices, while at the same time ensuring that those voices are informed and aware of the wider context in which they are formed. “Ultimately, I want to create an educational environment in which students become life-long learners for the simple fact that they begin to understand that curiosity, empathy and intellectual rigor enriches their existence.”

Marsh’s unflagging faith in, and contributions toward, the transformative power of education, have played a significant role in his receiving this year’s Ben and Janice Wade Outstanding Teaching Award. “I’m honored to receive the award,” he says. “Working with the students at Bridgewater College has been immensely fulfilling. This recognition reminds me of how fortunate I am to do what I love on a daily basis.”

Marsh lives in Fort Defiance, Va., with his wife, Anne, who serves as coordinator of international education at Bridgewater College.

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