Wyoming Arts Council

Theresa Bogard is internationally known as a pianist. She’s building quite a reputation as a teacher, too.

Bogard, a professor in the University of Wyoming’s Department of Music, was recently selected as the Council for Advancement and Support of Education’s (CASE) Wyoming Professor of the Year. This is the only national honor designed specifically to recognize excellence in undergraduate teaching and mentoring.

Nominated by UW Provost Myron Allen, Bogard received letters of recommendation from current and former students, colleagues and peers from other institutions. Nomination materials included her teaching logs and course descriptions, plus personal statements of her teaching and mentoring techniques, courses and curricula she created and steps she has taken to extend the learning process beyond the classroom.

“Professor Bogard is an internationally-recognized pianist in her own right, and she has shown tremendous dedication in sharing her craft and artistry with UW’s students,” Allen says. “We’re all delighted — but hardly surprised — that CASE has chosen her for this honor.”

This is Bogard’s second major award of 2008. She was one of five recipients this spring of a John P. Ellbogen Meritorious Classroom Teaching Award, which were founded in 1977 to foster, encourage and reward excellence in classroom teaching at UW.

In 2005, Bogard won UW’s Outstanding Faculty Commitment to Internationalization award, which is presented annually by UW’s International Board of Advisers.

“There are very few people in my academic and musical lives who have had a more positive influence on me, professionally and personally,” says Carolyn Cline, a former piano student. “I have worked with very few faculty members who have the ability to motivate and push their students to succeed like Dr. Bogard. Studying with her has made me a stronger person and musician, and I believe that is the definition of excellence in teaching.”

As a pianist, Bogard performs numerous solo and chamber music recitals throughout the U.S. each year and has appeared in concerto performances with the UW Symphony Orchestra, the UW Chamber Orchestra and the Jefferson Symphony Orchestra. She has also performed to rave reviews in Australia, Belgium, Mexico, New Zealand and Russia, among other places.

In addition, Bogard has presented lectures and recitals on music by American women composers at the Scripps College Inaugural Symposium on Women in Music in California and at the American Music, American Women Susan Porter Memorial Symposium in Colorado.

Bogard received her bachelor’s and doctoral degrees from the University of Colorado at Boulder and her master’s degree, all in piano performance, from the Eastman School of Music in New York. Prior to joining the UW faculty in 1992, Bogard held positions at Northeast Missouri State University and West Chester University in Pennsylvania.