Board of Trustees Remarks
Mark Taggart, Chair of the Faculty
July 25, 2006
Thank you. It
is an honor for me to be standing here to represent our faculty. The three months since I’ve been elected have
been most challenging but rewarding. I
am grateful for all of the guidance that Catherine Rigsby, our former Chair,
has given me during this transitional period.
She has been tremendous! Her hard
work, dedication to shared governance, her deep respect for the faculty and her
love for ECU has been an inspiration to me.
She’s about to embark on six-months of research studying in the Amazon
basin in Brazil. I wish her the utmost
success in her work and safe travels.
I would like to continue the tradition that Catherine
set out in her addresses to you in highlighting what our faculty are doing, as
well as informing you of the “mood” of the faculty. I am looking forward to answering all of your
questions regarding our newly revised Appendices C and D of the Faculty Manual. As our university grows and becomes more
complex we have had to make revisions in the requirements and ranks of faculty
members coming in on tenure track positions.
We have also had to add new titles to our fixed-term appointments, in
order to allow the various units on campus the flexibility to hire faculty on
the basis of their specific needs. The
Faculty Governance Committee has worked long and hard to develop these new
procedures, ranks and titles of the faculty in these revisions. They were tireless in their efforts to study
peer institutions, in hopes of obtaining a glimmer of how they have handled
these complex issues as their institutions have grown. I applaud their efforts. I also appreciate the sincere consultations
by the Deans who gave us valuable input and advice throughout the process, most
notably Dr. Phyllis Horns and Dr. Steve Thomas.
I’m sure that they are enjoying getting accustomed to this wonderful new
facility!
East Carolina University has gone through so many
changes since I joined the faculty in 1985 as an Assistant Professor of music
composition. I am fortunate to be serving our university in this position as we
enter our centennial year. There is much
to celebrate, However, I must also echo the sentiments expressed by my
colleague and friend Henry Ferrell in his upcoming books describing the history
of ECU. While it may be time to
celebrate the promises we’ve kept, we remain focused on our desire to fulfill
those promises we’ve made to our students, our university and our community.
The revisions we’ve made in our Faculty
Manual will help us to keep those promises we’ve made as we continue to
grow.
As I said earlier, I teach in the semi-autonomous
unit called the Department of Theory, Composition and Musicology, located in
the School of Music, which makes part of the College of Fine Arts and
Communication. I am a composer. I write music for others to perform. As a composer, I have tried to explore and
convey the entire gamut of the emotions and expressions found in the human
condition. What is most challenging is
to convince your musicians that your music is worth the time and effort needed
to perform it correctly. It requires
teamwork, and a sharing of the risks and rewards. There are successes and there are
frustrations. When I told Catherine
Rigsby of an experience I had with some musicians, she replied that she was
lucky to be in the field of geology, because “sediment doesn’t talk back.”
Now I would like to share with you the
accomplishments and contributions made by our new director of the ECU Symphony
Orchestra, Dr. Jorge Richter, who is beginning his fourth year here. Jorge comes from Brazil where he received his
baccalaureate at the Parana State School of Music and Fine Arts in
Curibita. He continued and completed his
studies at Michigan State University, and since then, has worked with
orchestras throughout the world. We are
lucky to have Jorge on the faculty! He
has taken an orchestra program that has gone through its share of troubles
recently. The morale of our students was
way down as we went through music director after music director. But our students were ignited by Jorge’s
passion for music and his drive for excellence.
They heard the improvements they made which further fueled their desire
to reach even higher. You can see it in
any rehearsal and performance. Look at
the musicians’ posture. They are sitting
upright, eyes in rapt attention, willing to do everything they possibly can for
that man on the podium.
And Jorge has taken them to musical heights that I
would never have thought possible here!
I invite you to listen to the CD of performances made by the ECU
Symphony and Jorge this past year.
Please feel free to compare his performances of those well-known and
beloved works by Tchaikovsky with any orchestra. There are wonderful, magical moments that
occur oh too rarely even by professional orchestras. (And these are our children performing
this.) What follows is a Passacaglia by Marlos Nobre, who is a
composer from Jorge’s homeland. That
music is in his blood! Finally, Alexander Nevsky is a powerful, complex
and demanding work by Serge Prokofiev, which requires full orchestra and
chorus. The stage at Wright auditorium
was filled to the rim. In fact, the fire
marshal has informed us that, due to the possible safety hazard we can no
longer perform works of that size and scope there.
As you listen to the CD, I want you to ask yourselves
why these wonderfully talented musicians, aided by Jorge’s nurturing
stewardship, can’t have their very own house to play in. Lack of proper orchestra/chorus facilities is
just one slice of the pie. In all my
time here, we’ve never been able to
adequately stage an opera, simply because we don’t have the space to produce
it. All
of our arts deserve our support.
We’ve made a promise to our students to give them
every possible opportunity for success and excellence, and by supporting our
efforts to build a visual and performing arts center in downtown Greenville,
you can help us keep that promise to our students and our community. I know that, as current Chair of the Faculty
and, later, returning faculty member to the School of Music, I’m going to do
all I can to make sure that promise is fulfilled.
Thank you.