Ashley Leasure (Also State of Ohio Student Employee of the Year)

Nominated by her supervisor, Dr. Hank Dahlman, Professor of Music, Director - Choral Studies, Director- CELIA (Collaborative Education, Leadership, and Innovation in the Arts).

Exemplifying reliability, quality of work, initiative, professionalism, and uniqueness of contribution.

Ashley's Contributions to Wright State

In his nomination letter, Dr. Dahlman outlined some of Ashley's accomplishments in the Department of Music:

"Choral Library Renovation

"During the summer of 2011, in preparation for the new building project to renovate Schuster Hall in the Creative Arts Center, we needed to free up space in the Music Wing. That summer, Ashley, along with the junior level UCA Jeeremy Bon, completely renovated and re-ordered the entire choral music library. This included culling out-of-date and/or out-of-print, and obsolete scores from the files of over 1,000 choral octavo titles (small works) and over 200 major works and anthology titles and other book-format materials. While doing so, Ashley designed and entered data for a completely revised and computerized choral library database, replacing the antiquated and inaccurate card files. She and her student assistants (many of them volunteers that she personally recruited) also completely revamped the library work areas and office space, and oversaw the installation of new shelving in the library, following up with a complete re-filing of all the remaining choral titles. This was a HUGE job, and it was done extraordinarily well, with minimum faculty supervision. In my opinion, this alone should merit an award for Ashley.

"Coordinated registration: 2010 and 2011 Mad River Vocal Arts Festivals

"This event involves registrations from over 125 high school students representing some 25 or 30 high schools each year. Registration involves in-take and database recording of registration forms, collection of fees and delivering these the same day to the Departmental administrative assistant in charge of accounts payable, and regular contact with school directors, students, parents, and public school officials, bookkeepers, and other administrative personnel. Since this is a major recruiting event for us, it is essential that this task be handled in a highly accurate, timely, and positive and friendly way (i.e., "customer service"). Because of this, I typically have assigned this task to a graduate assistant or WSU staff member, but in this case, I had every confidence that Ashley would do an outstanding job. She absolutely delivered, and then some. Some would say it was the smoothest festival we'd ever had, and I'd agree.

"Choral Assistant for Bernstein MASS with the Dayton Philharmonic

"Last May, the WSU Choral Program, in collaboration with the Department of Theatre, Dance & Motion Pictures and the Dayton Philharmonic Orchestra, presented a fully staged performance of MASS by Leonard Bernstein. The performances were the result of over three years of planning, and involved over 200 singers, instrumentalists, actors, dancers and technical crew. Over 80 choral singers from three different WSU choirs were involved. Ashley, along with graduate teaching assistant Amanda Hughes, oversaw all library and logistical matters pertaining to score acquisition, distribution and retrieval. The choral scores were only available as rental scores, EACH score costing $125 if not returned. Thus, we were responsible for the distribution and return of over $10,000 worth of rented scores. Ashley organized the whole thing, closely coordinating with the DPO Librarian. Needless to say, we got all the scores back from students, safely returning the scores to the DPO by the deadline.

"Choral Tour Manager

"Presently, Ashley is working as the Tour Manager for the Collegiate Chorale's presentation at the Ohio Music Education Association Professional Conference and our Spring Tour to Washington, DC and Virginia, which includes performances at the National Cathedral and Colonial Williamsburg. We will sing later this summer at the Champions Level of the World Choir Games, hosted this year for the first time in the US (as it happens, Cincinnati). As Tour Manager, Ashley is responsible for coordinating rooming lists, and contacting host organizations, providing lists of repertoire, and generally assisting me with the myriad of tasks and details, and often under strict deadlines. This is the smoothest year we've had in this regard, and yet the busiest, in over 5 years. No accident."

Congratulations and thank you, Ashley Leasure!

Wright State student employee ‘resets the bar,’ wins university and state awards

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Selection Committee

A special thanks to this year's selection committee:

• Jenny 'Alex' Alexander, Lecturer, Department of Communications;
• Jen McCamis, Associate Director, Undergraduate Admissions;
• Liane Muhlenkamp, Program Officer Assistant for Teacher Education, Lake Campus.

Congratulations to all nominees!

Thank you to those supervisors who participated in this year's program and nominated their excellent student employees: