Cathy Crispino is now the director of choral ensembles after two years of being an interim director. She said she is happy to make the title official.

“It’s a helpful change for families and prospective students to know that, ‘Oh, if I do attend Baker, this will be my choral director,'” Crispino said. “You know it won’t be someone who is constantly changing. There will be some stability.”

She thinks another benefit of the change is that she can now make long-term plans. Over the past two years, the choirs have been traveling to local high schools on recruitment tours, meeting and singing with their choirs.

“[The recruitment tours] are great outreach programs,” Crispino said. “I think it is a reasonable goal to try to broaden the choir. The choir is an ambassador for the university, and I think that we need to be more visible. So we are going to plan for ways to make that happen.”

Crispino will continue doing the same duties she has for the past few years: directing Concert Choir, Chamber Singers and the University Community Choir, as well as assisting in a few theater productions. Last year, she taught a choral directing course, and this year she is teaching a choral methods class.

Crispino discovered her talent for teaching at a young age with the encouragement from elementary teachers, and her passion for music surfaced in high school. She participated in orchestra and, whenever it fit in her schedule, choir. When her arrival at a new school allowed her to do both simultaneously, she realized her love for music.

“Music was always an important part of my life, and more and more, it became the center of my high school experience,” Crispino said. “It just seemed like the road led that direction. And I am not sorry that it did.”

Many of Crispino’s music students sing her praises, like, Senior Laura Bynum, who has been under Crispino’s choral direction for more than two years.

“She is one of the most passionate teachers I know on campus,” Bynum said. “She loves what she does. Her enthusiasm for music and teaching is evident through the way she carries herself, as well as through how she interacts with other music faculty members and students. Overall, she is a wonderful teacher, and the Music Department is very lucky to have her as part of the Baker family.”

Freshman Jason Shipps agreed, saying she is a great teacher and he loves her Concert Choir.

“After doing choir in high school for so long,” Shipps said, “I was worried I wasn’t going to have as much fun doing it in college. Now that I’m here, I’ve realized that I couldn’t have been more wrong.”