Dr. Plummer & Chamber Singers Win Advance Grant

Dr. William F. Plummer, from the College of the Arts/School of Music, won an Advance Faculty Support grant for the 24/25 academic year. This grant supported the Chamber Singers International Adjudication project.

This project allowed the top choir of 35 students to present their scholarly/creative work of this Course Embedded Research Experience at an invitational competition before an international audience and an international panel of adjudicators. The choir performed over two competition rounds across four days and finished strongly in 5th place in this international competition, competing against state-funded choirs from Slovenia, Austria, Sweden and Belarus, as well as a music conservatory choir from Switzerland.

The impacts to students’ lives have been tremendous—as they got to hear and see other top choirs from around the world present their creative work in competition too. They also had many cross-cultural exchanges and made friends among the other competitor choir members. This type of positive ambassadorship via the arts is needed in the world, and the benefits to Experiential Learning are significant.

This project will have benefits for years in the continued development of the choral program here at UL Lafayette, as students will not forget the global standard of music performance which they heard, saw, and lived during the trip. There have also been enormous benefits to recruitment, as the promotion of this trip via social media resulted in the largest number of vocal music major auditions for entrance in Fall 2025, in the history of the university. Last of all, these students—regardless of their major (and most are not music majors)—will not forget the benefits focus, dedication, scholarship, maturity, and rigor required to compete at such a high level. These benefits will no doubt be applied to these students’ primary areas of study, long influencing their work as young artists and career professionals.

Due to this trip and its visibility, donorship to the UL Lafayette Choirs has increased, including pledges to sustain future funding that can help defray student costs for these types of projects. This international adjudication proves that such trips can be accomplished here. The last choir which traveled internationally from our institution did so in 1977 (a tour, not a competition). It is vital that we continue to present and adjudicate our research globally, which reflects positively on us as ambassadors for our country, our state, and our institution. This elevates undergraduate research to a worldwide level of visibility, develops international partners and stakeholders, provides transformative experiences for our students, and continues to foster excellence in our programs at the UL Lafayette longitudinally through global engagement.