The Association of Wisconsin Symphony Orchestras 2012 Service to Music Award

GERARD MCKENNA, Ph.D.
Stevens Point, Wisconsin

A native of Brooklyn, New York, Gerard McKenna, studied bassoon in New York with Frank Robert Cole and piano with German Diaz at the Greenwich House Music School. He holds the bachelor’s and master’s degrees in music education from Kansas State College and his Ph.D. from the University of Nebraska where he was an instructor in music education.

He taught instrumental and vocal music in the public schools of Kansas and Missouri for seven years,served as adjunct professor on the faculty at Kansas State College as teacher of bassoon and member of the Faculty Woodwind Quintet and as music teacher at College High Laboratory High School

In 1974, he joined the Department of Music at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee in music education, became Department Chairperson, then Associate Dean and finally Acting Dean of the School of Fine Arts.

In 1989 he was appointed Dean of the College of Fine Arts and Communication at UW-Stevens Point. In addition, he taught beginning conducting and graduate music education coursework. He then reshaped and directed the B.A. in arts management program at UW-Stevens Point teaching core courses, advising students and supervising internships.

McKenna served as chairperson of the Stevens Point Arts Council and was instrumental in the development of the Riverfront Arts center. He is past president of the board of directors of the Central Wisconsin Symphony Orchestra and served on the board of the International Council of Fine Arts Deans. He also was a founding member of the Wisconsin Assembly of Local Arts Agencies which became Arts Wisconsin. He is currently a board member on the Robert E. Gard Foundation of Madison, the Community Foundation of Central Wisconsin, the Melvin R. Laird Youth Leadership Advisory Board and the Stevens Point Sculpture Park Committee, a new initiative for outdoor sculpture located in a twelve-acre park within the city of Stevens Point.

In 2004, McKenna won the Robert E. Gard Award for Excellence in the Arts, the only administrator in the UW-System to receive this award. In 2000 he was awarded the Arts Education Career Award from the Wisconsin Alliance for Arts Education. In 1993 he was awarded the Distinguished Service Award from the Wisconsin Music Educators Association, served as the WMEA president from 1996-1998 and in 2000 was named as one of twelve outstanding music teachers in the State of Wisconsin by the Music Educators National Conference in Washington, D.C.

McKenna has served as a panelist for the Wisconsin Arts Board and was selected to be a participant at the Education Leaders Institute sponsored by the National Endowment for the Arts relating to his work on the Wisconsin Task Force on Arts and Creativity in Education under the direction of the State Superintendent of Public Instruction and the Lt. Governor of the State of Wisconsin. He also served as a panelist for the NEA’s Learning in the Arts grants panel in 2009.

Currently he serves as spokesperson for the Fox Theatre Steering Committee. This group generated a feasibility study for refurbishing an Opera House constructed in 1896 that later became the Fox Theatre. This process is part of a City plan to completely renovate the downtown mall in the City of Stevens Point.