School of the Arts announces faculty grant awardees

Lily Lee

Funding from a School of the Arts grant is supporting short-term project completion in which artwork by ADVS Associate Professor Lily Lee will be professionally documented by Allie Dunn, an undergraduate senior in the BFA in Visual Arts-Photography Emphasis program. This will support Lee in advancing her research and activity with high quality digital photographs for dissemination. Distinguished curators and jurors evaluate the quality of the artwork in applications for opportunities such as exhibitions and publications based solely on viewing digital images of the artwork. This project makes experiential learning opportunities in the student experience possible to support career readiness by providing Allie Dunn with the opportunity to conduct compensated professional photo documentation work. Publication of the photographs in exhibition catalogs, online exhibitions, journals and other forms of dissemination will directly credit her for the photo documentation, advancing her repertoire as a professional photographer.

Chad Erpelding

Chad Erpelding, Professor of Drawing and Painting in the Department of Art, Design, and Visual Studies and Beret Norman, Associate Professor of German in World Languages will be taking a group of students to Berlin, Germany for ten days in July. Berlin has a rich and complicated history. It is a site of horrors of war from the 20th century and of catastrophic ruptures to society. Simultaneously, it has one of the most dynamic and thriving art scenes in the world. Erpelding’s course “Art in Berlin” will be joining with Norman’s course “Memory Culture in Berlin” to explore these opposing and overlapping perspectives of the city. Students will visit art museums, contemporary art centers, galleries, an artist residency program, artist studios, history museums, monuments, and other significant cultural centers. Students will gain direct access to artists and contested sites of memory, providing the opportunity to experience firsthand the realities of the art world as well as how a society addresses its history.

Samantha Harvey

Faculty from Gaming and Interactive Media and English Literature were awarded a School of Arts Cross Pollination grant to foster an innovative partnership to develop a Mobile Application for phones and computers. The app, called a “Million Changes & Me,” will promote the visualization of climate disruption and mitigation. The grant will fund students from GIMM to code and design a “gamified” app about making small changes to our daily lives that reduce our carbon footprint. The goal of the mobile application is to create a positive, data-driven educational tool to track small changes to daily habits that reduce an individual, community, or institution’s carbon footprint. The title refers to the fact that it took two hundred years and millions of little changes to contribute to climate crisis, and a million changes might be needed to get us out of it. MC&M will be a fun, educational, and empowering experience because it will “gameify” environmental education. Like Wordle, you can compete against other users either one-on-one, or you could challenge a rival school, university, community or church group to a “Green Challenge.” You could rack up “streaks” like in Duolingo to see how many days you could forgo riding in a car. You could click on any category (Work, School, Home, Garden, Food, Shopping) and be linked to easy changes you could make on a given day. Samantha Harvey from English Literature is the PI for this grant and Anthony Ellertson from GIMM will collaborate on this initiative with Jen Pierce from Geosciences. Once complete, their community partner, The Nature Conservancy, will promote the app as part of its local, national, and international initiatives.

Christina Mancheni

This project aims to enhance student career readiness and experiential learning by sending up to two voice students from Boise State University’s Department of Music to the prestigious American Institute of Musical Studies summer program in Graz, Austria. The program offers intensive training in voice, lyric diction, acting, audition preparation, and German language instruction, alongside performance opportunities and collaboration with esteemed faculty from professional opera houses, and universities around the world. In addition to artistic development, students will experience cultural enrichment and build a global network of mentors and peers. The project promises to foster both individual growth and a lasting impact on the Boise State community. With my experience as both a former participant and current faculty member at AIMS, I am uniquely positioned to guide and mentor the students throughout this transformative journey.

Kramer Milan

The Bronco Percussion Group (BPG) is one of the region’s premier new music ensembles, consisting of percussion major students from the Department of Music, under the direction of Kramer Milan. This spring, BPG will present five exciting performances, including appearances at the Treefort Music Festival, the Percussive Arts Society Idaho Day of Percussion at Meridian High School, and BPG’s annual Spring Semester Concert at the Morrison Center. Additionally, the group will perform an outreach concert alongside Borah High School’s Percussion Ensemble and serve as a featured performer at the Northwest Percussion Festival in Ashland, OR. These diverse performances provide students with invaluable real-world experience as a professional touring ensemble, enhancing their musical skills across a wide range of venues. The Northwest Percussion Festival also offers masterclasses, clinics, and networking opportunities with industry leaders, further enriching the educational experience and opening doors for future career prospects. BPG is grateful for the support it receives to cover travel and instrument related expenses, ensuring the success of these performances!

Nicole Molumby

As a sophomore, double majoring in music and business at Boise State, Christine Nygard is a focused young woman who is already working as a performing artist in the greater Boise music scene and PNW. Her participation in the Music on the Flipside workshop helped her deepen her connections with community partners and ignite a fire to develop her skills as an entrepreneur and performing artist in the music industry.

Christine is helping our music department reimagine what “being a music major” looks like in 2025; she is versatile, entrepreneurial, actively performing, business minded, and engaged in our community. She leads the way with enthusiasm, joy, and creativity.

Christine received a Lamond GenNext Award from the National Association of Music Merchants to attend the 2025 NAMM show in Anaheim CA along with Dr. Nicole Molumby who was awarded a Faculty Fellows position to attend the NAMM show with her.

The music department is excited to be sending a delegate of students and faculty to the 2026 NAMM show with the support of this SOA grant!

Raquel Davis

With the funding provided by a School of the Arts Cross-pollination Grant, faculty from the Department of Theatre, Film and Creative Writing; the Department of Art and Visual Studies; and the Department of Games, Interactive Media and Mobile Technology will meet during the summer of 2025 to begin the design process for “A Christmas Carol,” with plans to mount the new production on the main stage of the Morrison Center in the winter of 2026. This crucial collaborative time will be dedicated to finalizing the choice of script, exploring plans for digital projection and possible immersive theatrical elements, and making significant progress toward understanding the shape and nature of our stage.

Zachary Buie

The Boise State Trumpet Ensemble has accepted an invitation to perform at the International Trumpet Guild Conference following a competitive selection process. Nine members of the trumpet studio will travel to Salt Lake City from May 27-30. They will perform a work for trumpet ensemble by Eric Morales entitled Infinite Ascent at the University of Utah. This experience will serve as a keystone event in the musical career of each student, and mark a significant milestone in the artistic growth of the Boise State Trumpet Studio. The students are led by Dr. Zach Buie and Dr. Derek Ganong.