MAKING MUSIC
Graduates whose career paths were paved with musical studies
Sharon Woster Pabon ’94, Kendall Zini-Jones ’03, Glynnis Garry ’07, Josephine Hsieh ’05
An active soloist and chamber musician, Sharon Woster Pabon ’94 has performed at venues throughout the Washington, D.C./Baltimore area including the U.S. Capitol, National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, Summer Opera Theater Company, Opera International, Baltimore Museum of Art, and Camden Yards. She also enjoys a busy teaching career, maintaining a private flute studio and holding faculty positions at the D.C. Youth Orchestra Program and Musical Expressions in Bethesda. Sharon is a first place winner of the Mid-Atlantic Flute Fair Collegiate Soloist competition. She received a Master of Music in Flute Performance from Peabody Conservatory. A native of Dallas, mezzo-soprano Kendall Zini-Jones ’03 completed a master’s degree in opera studying under performance great Carol Vaness at Indiana University. She appeared with the IU Opera Theater as Candace in the collegiate première of William Bolcom’s A Wedding and as Stella in Les contes d’Hoffmann. She has been featured in concerts and operas around Europe. Most recently she was seen as Suzuki in Madama Butterfly and Caterina in L’Amico Fritz for Cincinnati CollegeConservatory of Music’s Opera Theater and Music Festival of Lucca., Italy. The 2011 Notre Dame Distinguished Student Award was presented to Glynnis Garry ’07 in honor of her academic performance and service to the community. Glynnis completed a double major in Pre-Medicine and American Studies, with a minor in the Glynn Family Honors Program. In her sophomore year, she traveled to an orphanage in rural Honduras to help open a surgery center. Upon her return, she co-founded Friends of the Orphans at Notre Dame. Since 2008, she has tutored young children and high school students through the Center for Social Concerns. As a senior, she led the Band of the Fighting Irish as Head Drum Major. She is currently attending Vanderbilt University School of Medicine. Josephine Hsieh ’05 received a Bachelor of Music degree from the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music where she studied with Eugene and Elizabeth Pridonoff. There she performed for the renowned Liszt scholar Alan Walker, won first prize in the MacDowell Arts Foundation, and earned top honors in piano concerto competitions. At the Norwegian Academy of Music, Josephine studied with Håvard Gimse and won the Conoco-Philips Music Stipend Competition. She was honored to play for the King of Norway and participated in the Takamatsu International Piano Competition in Japan this past March. In July she married fellow concert pianist Øyvind Sundsvalen at St. Rita Catholic Church in Dallas; the couple resides in Oslo.
speare to underprivileged students in Austin on weekends. She also composed the music for her role as Ariel in SOS’ production of The Tempest and wrote a ‘ditty’ for Foot in the Door’s production of Country Wife.
NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY THEATER Sarah Weber ’09 was recently accepted into both the Creative Writing program and the Playwriting Sequence at Northwestern University, two highly competitive programs. She also serves as the Executive Director of the Radio Drama program on Northwestern’s radio station, WNUR 89.3fm, and is in charge of publicity and fundraising for several student shows on campus. In her scant spare time, she serves on
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URSULINE ACADEMY OF DALLAS
the Executive Board of Alpha Chi Omega and is in charge of philanthropy. Last summer she studied Spanish in Barcelona.
a university research grant, and served as an assistant teacher for the Laura Schellhardt playwriting sequence last summer. Sarah also served as the writing chair for PreTENd Productions, leading a student-organized seminar where students received course credit. Now with her coveted diploma in hand, Sarah has set down roots in New York to pursue her theatrical dreams.
Elizabeth Pyke ’09 is working as the sports anchor in the Trinity University newsroom.
TELEVISION AND FILM
LAW
Kelly Bach ’05 graduated from the University of Oklahoma with a film studies degree and works with Larry Levinson Productions in Los Angeles. She became interested in film editing while she was at Ursuline.
Perry Woods ’05 is currently working as Case Manager for a law firm in Dallas and plans on attending law school.
Julie Cole ’05 works for the Domestic Theatrical Publicity department at Warner Bros. Pictures.
Michelle Weilert ’05 has opened seven off-Broadway plays in New York City, the latest in April 2011. Three of the plays got an initial test run at Ursuline before they were produced. She has worked as an adjunct faculty member at Loyola Marymount University and co-taught playwriting with Beth Henley (author of Crimes of the Heart). Last year, Michelle worked as an assistant for NBC Writers on the Verge, a fellowship that provides training for TV writing to outstanding writers who are “on the verge” of being discovered.
Carolyn McLaughlin ’04 received her J.D./MPA in 2011 from Texas Tech University. Meggie Sudderth Gilstrap ’04 received her J.D. 2011 at Harvard Law School. She is currently clerking for a Federal Bankruptcy Judge in New York.
AND MORE Nicole Daboub ’02 is a news personality who covered the royal wedding last year as a correspondent for The Insider.
Jessica Barnett ’05 is a member of the theatre faculty at Parish Episcopal School of Dallas and is known for her love of directing musicals. Kate O’Neill Emrich ’05 is a Certified Public Accountant with Pricewaterhouse Coopers.
Erin Dooley ’09 is working as a news anchor at Trinity University. She questioned Colin Powell at a San Antonio press conference, as well as Robert Gates and Sir Salman Rushdie at other press conferences. Erin spent last summer in a paid internship at Androvett Legal Media in Dallas. Bethy Poluikis ’03 works in film and television in Los Angeles and is currently appearing with the Second City Comedy Troupe in Hollywood, CA.
Follies cast (from left to right) Kari Sorenson, Jenny Guse, Christina Meyers, Amanda Tanguay, and AMANDA KROISS '07.
Kristin Kuhn ’07 recently graduated with a degree in Biological Engineering from MIT. Kristin is taking a year off from her studies before attending medical school. During that time, she'll be working as a missionary to the poor in Denver with a program called Christ in the City. Younger sister Courtney Kuhn ’10 is studying saxophone performance at Arizona State University and, during her visits to Dallas, can be seen cantoring on Sunday evenings at the St. Monica Youth Mass.
Miki Bone Melsheimer ’79, former Ursuline Academy faculty member, is a current Masters candidate in Humanities with an emphasis in Aesthetic Studies at the University of Texas at Dallas. She continues to be involved as an Ursuline Alumna, and most recently served as a member of the Exploratory Team for Curriculum for the Ursuline Strategic Planning Committee.
“REINVESTING IN ARTS EDUCATION” The statements below have been excerpted from “Reinvesting in Arts Education,” a 2011 report by the President’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities. Scientific Research Neuro-Ed Initiative researchers at Johns Hopkins hypothesize that arts integration, which emphasizes repetition of information in multiple ways, provides the advantage of embedding knowledge in longterm memory. The brain prioritizes emotionally-tinged information (again, a possible additional advantage for learning through music or theatre, for example) for conversion to long-term memory. The initiative is one of several research projects which are looking more systematically at how arts instruction supports learning transfer. Such scientific research may also help to uncover the reasons for the observations that many teachers have made about how students learn differently — some seem to learn best kinesthetically, others respond best to visual or aural approaches. Public Policy A remarkably consistent picture of the value of the arts in a comprehensive pre-K through grade 12 education emerges from a review of two decades of theory and policy recommendations about arts education. Over the past decade, professional groups with a broad education interest have begun promoting the value of arts education using the same arguments as traditional arts advocates such as the National Endowment for the Arts, the Arts Education Partnership, the National Assembly of State Arts Agencies, and Americans for the Arts. Last year’s 2010 U.S. Conference of Mayors, which represents the mayors of more than 1,200 cities nationwide, urged school districts to use federal and state resources to provide direct instruction in the arts and integrate the arts with other core subjects. While there is support for the intrinsic value of developing cultural literacy and teaching artistic skills and techniques, leadership groups typically emphasize instrumental outcomes derived from high quality arts education in one or more of the following categories: IjkZ[dj WY^_[l[c[dj" jof_YWbbo Wi h[fh[i[dj[Z Xo h[WZ_d] and mathematics performance on high stakes tests, including transfer of skills learning from the arts to learning in other academic areas — for example, the spatial-temporal reasoning skills developed by music instruction
Amanda Kroiss ’07, armed with her recently earned diploma from Northwestern University, was among the chosen few when Chicago Shakespeare Theater announced the cast list for the fall 2010 production of Stephen Sondheim and James Goldman’s Follies. She is currently appearing in Gypsy at Drury Lane Oakbrook Theatre in Chicago, IL through April 1, 2012.
IjkZ[dj cej_lWj_ed WdZ [d]W][c[dj" _dYbkZ_d] _cfhel[Z attendance, persistence, focused attention, heightened educational aspirations, and intellectual risk taking
Sarah Einspanier ’07 was the winner of the Agnes Nixon Playwriting Festival at Northwestern. There she completed her senior Honors thesis, a full-length play and staged reading, received
Each category of outcomes is composed of many distinct behaviors that have been supported by findings from research studies and evaluations.
:[l[befc[dj e\ ^WX_ji e\ c_dZ _dYbkZ_d] fheXb[c iebl_d]" critical and creative thinking, dealing with ambiguity and complexity, integration of multiple skill sets, and working with others :[l[befc[dj e\ ieY_Wb Yecf[j[dY_[i" _dYbkZ_d] YebbWXehWj_ed and teamwork skills, social tolerance, and self-confidence
URSULINE ACADEMY OF DALLAS
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