BLOOMINGTON, Ill. – From Wednesday, Feb. 22 to Friday, Feb. 24, the Illinois Wesleyan School of Music will host alumnus and acclaimed opera singer Kyle Pfortmiller, class of 1992, as he gives two master classes and a recital.

All events will take place in Westbrook Auditorium of Presser Hall (1210 Park St., Bloomington) and are free and open to the public.

On Wednesday at 11 a.m., Pfortmiller will give a master class for IWU music students, hoping to challenge singers to engage with a text emotionally and technically. The following day at 4 p.m., Pfortmiller will give a presentation on his career and hold an open-forum for questions. He will end his visit with a recital on Friday at 7:30 p.m.

A highly esteemed vocalist by critics across the country, Pfortmiller has performed with a number of opera companies, including the Metropolitan Opera (The Met), New York City Opera (NYCO), Florida Grand Opera and Tulsa Opera, in addition to others.

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BLOOMINGTON, Ill. – On Monday, Feb. 6, the winners of the 10th Annual Craig Noel Awards were announced and honored at a ceremony in the Museum of Contemporary Art in San Diego, Calif. Among the honorees was Illinois Wesleyan alumna Katie Whalley, class of 2009.

Whalley, who graduated with a bachelor of fine arts in musical theater, was given a nod for Outstanding Featured Performance in a Musical for her portrayal of Louise, later Gypsy Rose Lee, in “Gypsy: A Musical Fable.”

During her time at Illinois Wesleyan, Whalley was in a number of productions, including The Glass Menagerie, Into the Woods, Scrooge!, Of Thee I Sing!and the Faculty Choreographed Dance Concert.

Awarded annually by the San Diego Theatre Critics Circle, the Craig Noel Award for Excellence in Theatre is given on behalf of professional print and online theatre critics in San Diego. The award is named in honor of Noel, the longtime artistic director at San Diego’s Old Globe Theatre.

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BLOOMINGTON, Ill. – Dave Kindred, a 1963 Illinois Wesleyan graduate, has been chosen as the 2012 winner of The Dick Schaap Award for Outstanding Journalism.

Kindred joins a list of previous Schaap Award recipients that include Bob Costas, Frank Deford, Jim McKay and Mitch Albom.

The Dick Schaap Award for Outstanding Journalism was established in 2002 to honor the memory of one of Americas pre-eminent sports writers, Dick Schaap. The award is presented by the Nassau County Sports Commission and is given out to the journalist, in any medium, that best exemplifies the principles and talents of Dick Schaap during the past year. The award recipient is determined by confidential balloting of the Dick Schaap Selection Committee, which is composed of respected members of the media, and chaired by Dick’s son, ESPN reporter Jeremy Schaap.

Although the recipient need not be a sports journalist, he/she must convey the passion and insight for the stories and people he/she covers as Schaap did.

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BLOOMINGTON, Ill. – On October 12, Judith Schulz ’71 and 20,000 others across the world will throw their spinning tops, creating the characteristic gravity-defying rotation in honor of International Top Spinning Day.

International Top Spinning Day is held in celebration of the toy that has endured centuries. While some may have forgotten about these seeming antiques, participants in the upcoming festivities will range from as far as South Africa, France, Switzerland and Romania, reminding Schulz that, “the earth is just like a large spinning top, rotating around a single axis.”

In celebration of the rich history of the top and to educate people on the science behind these toys, Schulz created in 1987 The Spinning Top Museum, which she opened in Burlington, Wis. Over the past 24 years, the museum has evolved into an exhibition with over 2,000 items, hands-on games, experiments and tours. Schulz says that when she arrived at Illinois Wesleyan as an art education major, she never would have guessed how her four years at the University would influence her to one day open such a place with the most extensive collection of spinning tops in the world.

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BLOOMINGTON, Ill. – Carol Brandt, Illinois Wesleyan University Class of 1978, was recently recognized as a member of Barron’s “Top 100 Women Financial Advisors.” In the June 6 issue of the newspaper, Brandt was ranked number 64 in the United States.

Brandt, who is also a member of Barron’s “Top 1000 Financial Advisors” in the nation, has made the top women financial advisor’s list for three years in a row.

“It’s a huge honor to be recognized as one of the top women financial advisors in the country,” said Brandt. “I’m very excited to be in the company of such a dynamic group of women. Being included on the list provides instant credibility to clients and prospective clients. This also provides increased visibility and credibility within my peer group.”

Barron’s, published by Dow Jones & Company since 1921, reports weekly on current American financial information, market developments and relevant statistics. Each year they publish several lists consisting of rankings of the top financial. The list is based on certain criteria: the volume of assets overseen by the advisors and their teams, revenues generated for the firms and the quality of the advisors’ practices.

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BLOOMINGTON, Ill. – In Nicaragua, 28 percent of all female adolescents are either pregnant or have already given birth—a statistic earning the nation the highest adolescent birth rate in all of Latin America, according to a recent study by the University of Costa Rica School of Public Health.

By providing health information and counseling to the women of Nicaragua through the University of Chicago’s Human Rights Internship Program, Erin Bradley, class of 2010, hopes to help change those statistics.

“It’s really important for social workers to have a human rights lens in the work they do, and it’s also important for human rights activists to include social workers and other ‘ground-level’ personnel in their activism,” said Bradley, a Normal native who double majored in history and Hispanic studies during her time at Illinois Wesleyan and is currently working toward her master’s degree in Social Service Administration at the University of Chicago.  “This internship was the perfect opportunity to blend my career development as a social worker with my growing interest in international human rights causes.”

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BLOOMINGTON, Ill. – Illinois Wesleyan University graduate Geoffrey Grimm ’11 has been awarded the honor of best undergraduate paper at the Central States Anthropology Society (CSAS) conference, held in April at the University of Iowa’s Memorial Union in Iowa City, Iowa.

At the conference, Grimm presented a version of his senior honors thesis, “Masturbation Play and Word Games.”  According to Professor of Anthropology Charles Springwood, Grimm’s advisor for both the senior honors and the conference paper, this is the first time an Illinois Wesleyan student has won a national or regional award in anthropology.

Founded in 1921, CSAS is a professional society that holds a meeting each spring welcoming cultural, physical and applied anthropologists, archaeologists, linguists and other interested scholars to present and discuss current ideas and research in the field.  The CSAS Executive Board awards graduate and undergraduate paper prizes for papers presented at the conference.

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