Along Slant Walk

Voiceful Awakening

2014 Effective Educator Tammy Kernodle demonstrates a different kind of vocal training

By Margo Kissell

Tammy Kernodle is trying to draw students in her “Enter the Diva: Women in Music” class into a discussion about the emergence of singer-songwriters Carole King and Joni Mitchell.

Their rise on the charts was set against a backdrop of an escalating Vietnam War, growing feminist movement, and other social change, she points out.

The students quietly take notes, keeping their heads down.

“Are we all praying?” says Kernodle, professor of musicology, whose quip elicits chuckles from her 52 students. One wades into the conversation.

Then another.

The Miami University Alumni Association selected Kernodle for the 2014 Effective Educator Award, which recognizes “the people of uncommon quality who instruct, impact, and inspire.” Since 1983, the award has been given annually to these difference-makers, nominated by members of that year’s five-year reunion class; in Kernodle’s case, the Class of 2010.

John Killings ’10, assistant director of student advocacy and programming at Case Western Reserve University, nominated Kernodle for having a great impact on his life. He recalled taking her junior-level class “The Roots of Black Music” as a freshman and discovering he was unprepared to handle the course load and assignments.

“At that point in my college career I did not have the foundational knowledge of basic writing techniques and research skills to accomplish all of the required assignments,” he wrote in the nomination letter.

Kernodle scheduled an academic intervention to discuss his performance and assisted him in writing the thesis statement for his research paper. “She even offered to come in on the weekend to help me with understanding other course assignments,” he wrote.

“Her persistence and compassion provided an example to follow,” he said, noting that he now models that same approach with his students.

For Kernodle — called “Dr. K” by some students — the award is validation that she not only is having an impact in the classroom but made the right choice going into this field of study.

Kernodle earned a bachelor of music in choral music education and piano from Virginia State University and a master’s and doctorate in music history from Ohio State University.

She had planned to teach music in the public schools but made a discovery during her student teaching experience that made her change course.

“Because there was such a large population of African-American students I was dealing with, I really needed information that could relate various things musically to them and it wasn’t there,” she said.

“There were very few people writing about black composers of classical music. You could find information on people like Michael Jackson, but these alternative voices just weren’t there.”

Mentors encouraged her to help bring about that change.

At Miami, her research focuses on various genres of African-American music, jazz, as well as gender and popular music.

Kernodle also has served as the Scholar-in-Residence for the Women in Jazz Initiative at the American Jazz Museum in Kansas City, Mo., and has lectured extensively on the operas of William Grant Still and the life and compositions of jazz pianist and composer Mary Lou Williams.

She wrote the biography Soul on Soul: The Life and Music of Mary Lou Williams, served as associate editor of the three-volume Encyclopedia of African-American Music, and was senior editor for the revision of New Grove Dictionary of American Music.

The past two years she has kept busy as a consultant on the music exhibits for the Smithsonian’s National African-American Museum of History and Cultures, slated to open on the National Mall in the summer of 2016.

Back in Presser Hall, Kernodle and her class listen intently to audio clips of Mitchell and King singing to get a sense of the lyrics and their unique styles.

And she’s still nudging students to add their own voices to the class discussion.

“I’m trying to get them to understand that your voice is your voice,” said Kernodle, who gave the fall commencement address Dec. 12. She will be recognized for the Effective Educator Award at the Alumni Awards dinner Feb. 21.

Read her commencement address, “Life is like a Blues Song.”

Excellent field position: Making one of the largest single donations ever received by the athletic department, real estate developer Randy Gunlock ’77 and his wife, Vicki, of Dayton, are providing a lead gift of $6 million to construct the Gunlock Family Performance Center, which will include a weight room, football locker room, hydrotherapy area, and student-athlete rehabilitation center. The facility will be built between Yager and the new Indoor Sports Center at the northeast end of the stadium. Vicki was a letter-winner on the University of Charleston’s crew team and Randy was a letter-winner and former captain of Miami’s football team (1973-1976). During those seasons, the team won three MAC championships and three bowl victories. Randy’s father, Bill ’51, was also a successful Miami student-athlete, lettering in football. A former football coach and retired from the company he founded, Bill is a former Miami trustee, foundation and Red & White advisory board member, and a 2008 inductee into Miami’s Athletics Hall of Fame.

BY THE NUMBERS: More than 25,300 students applied for fall 2014 admission. This record number culminated in enrolling 3,641 impressive, diverse, and talented students as Miami’s Class of 2018. Here’s a snapshot of some of the new classmates, taken during a block party at Goggin Ice Center their first night on campus as freshmen.

(Click to enlarge)