For those of you in or near Valpo, The LSM is now underway! For those unfamiliar with this, LSM comes to Valpo, from all over the country, every summer for an entire month. There are about 200 students plus 100 staff and teachers. They stay on campus, eat the food as well as many parents coming to town for the conclusion, thus helping local hotels and restaurants.
From Valpo's perspective, these students are all deeply interested in music and in particular, church music. As a result, they are custom made for potential Valpo students. Facebook carries nightly performances. Some really great stuff. All free admission as well!
Any sense of the Valpo yield on the past camper attendees on the Valpo campus? I share your optimism.
I wonder also if there are any history correlations between camp attendees with an eventual choice to major in music in college? In either case, does Valpo still offer a music major? I know it was on the list for review.
@realist77 I have no statistics or numbers, but I do know that the music department does like to point out the current students who were former LSM attendees. Most of those students are music/music education majors, but not all, and I believe that LSM is similarly geared towards students planning to major in music but not exclusively.
LSM also has people who are like camp counselors/musical mentors combo, and many of them are current or former Valpo students.
And yes, Valpo does have a music major still, they removed the Bachelor of Music degree as an administrative move but that did not do anything really in practice since virtually every music major at Valpo goes for a Bachelor of Arts in music.
Thanks truly for the clarification. So, if the music MAJOR numbers dwarf any numbers of B.M. program folk, why even mention it at all? Or why not lead the story with emphatic clarifications that students can still major in music? Very few of us are provosts or music department deans.
Thanks truly for the clarification. So, if the music MAJOR numbers dwarf any numbers of B.M. program folk, why even mention it at all? Or why not lead the story with emphatic clarifications that students can still major in music? Very few of us are provosts or music department deans.
Here ya go:
@realist77 Could possibly have been just that news outlets saw the word music and jumped all over it with the same misunderstandings that are easy to have with that, but you are right that at the very least Valpo should have had more information to preemptively answer any criticism. Definitely didn't help their case on the PR which unfortunately seems to be a fairly common occurrence.
In other news, rather ironically given that LSM is being discussed here, the campus community got an email today about Lutheran Summer Music including the normal pitch to come to concerts, but also including a note that while they are committed to have it return to Valpo in the future, "it may be a little while before we have the opportunity to welcome them back." LSM was never designed as an exclusively Valpo thing, as it was created to be hosted in different institutions, but it was hosted at Valpo for nine straight years so having it move on now is an unfortunate development. Hoping its departure is not for too many summers.
That does beg two interesting questions. I too perceived it as a campus-rotation program. 1) Why did it lock into a 9-year stay at Valpo? 2) Why has it gone back to the rotation concept?
The probably locked themselves in because the chapel isn't just a chapel. It also doubles as a concert hall (one of the better concert halls acoustically in NWI might I add). The Chapel plays host to a ton of musical events throughout the year because of this. The more well known ones being LMS and Tuba Christmas. When you have a really nice venue that is being thrown at you year in and year out. It makes it really hard to leave
They probably went back to the regional format because it's meant to be a "nation wide event". I would imagine they are approached by a number of locations for this event. Some locations might have tied a hefty donation to making them the home for a year
I would imagine they are approached by a number of locations for this event. Some locations might have tied a hefty donation to making them the home for a year
To my knowledge LSM has only gone to Lutheran College campus'. Obviously, when you are housing hundreds of people dorms are a much cheaper option. Other Lutheran sites don't have a chapel like Valpo but do have larger concert venues. At Valpo, the largest venue other than the ARC or Chapel is the Desenberg recital hall, which seats 170.
Yeah, I think it's mainly Lutheran institutions - but it and the music program more widely has made Valpo known among other place too. I have an aunt who's the dean of the arts/humanities division at another similarly sized private institution in the Midwest, and when I got the VU faculty job offer, she knew of it specifically because of the Music dept/program and the LSM and thought very highly of all that.....Though I admit I'm less and less sure of whether any of her advice was on pointe, though, since she also said VU seemed financially stable, haha!
