07-08 Music and Language Mentors

Ben Fuhrman
Music Mentor
Music Composition
fuhrmanb@msu.edu

Ben Fuhrman  is a doctoral candidate in MSU's College of Music. He received his Bachelor of Music in Violin Performance from Hope College in 2004, and his Master of Music in Composition from Michigan State in 2006. In addition to his degree, he was awarded both the Distinguished Artist and Distinguished Scholar awards from Hope College.

Ben’s works have been performed in Michigan, Texas, and most recently at the IMMARTS TechArts 2007 Festival in Illinois. His current compositional interests are the integration of computer editing in live performances, timbral synthesis and hybrid sounds, scoring for film, and improvisation in art music. In addition to his compositional activities, he also enjoys performing on violin, mandolin, and harmonica, and attempting to learn guitar.

Sam Merciers
Music Mentor
Music Composition
mercie11@msu.edu
www.sammerciers.com

Sam Merciers is currently pursuing a DMA in music composition at MSU.  His diverse musical background includes performing live in orchestras, concert bands, chamber ensembles, a reggae band, an electronica jamband, the electro-acoustic improvisation ensemble the audimus players, and currently with a local indi band.  He also composes for a wide range of ensembles.  Current interests include the use of electronics in live, interactive performance and improvisation and the aesthetic implications of music generated in this fashion. 

Sam’s music has been performed across the United States as well as in Europe and Puerto Rico.  His 2005 work simony: for amplified saxophone with live sampling and delay will be featured on the upcoming CD release by University of New Mexico saxophone professor and MSU alum Eric Lau.

Monica Del Valle
Language Mentor
Visiting Assistant Professor
delvall3@msu.edu

Monica Del Valle recently finished her PhD in Hispanic Cultural Studies at MSU, where she also did her masters degree. As a student, she received several awards, including Outstanding Teaching Assistant award in 2007.  Monica’s dissertation was an exploration of the art critiques written by well-known Cuban poet and essayist José Lezama Lima on Cuban painters of the avant-gard.  She earned her BA in translation from a university in Colombia, her native country, and she is strongly committed to translating Caribbean literature, both French and English, into Spanish.

This year, as a postdoc, Monica will work on improving her Haitian creole and on diving deeper into the Caribbean arts and cultures. She is very interested in Caribbean film/theater, queer works, “naïve” painting, and music from that region.  Her research for the future will center around the connections between the Pacific and Atlantic Colombian regions with the rest of the Caribbean.

Julie Foss
Language Mentor
French Language and Literature
fossjuli@msu.edu

Julie Foss is a PhD student in French at MSU. She holds a BA in French and History from Albion College and an MA in French from Eastern Michigan University. Her research interests include second language acquisition and pedagogy, second language reading, and regional languages in France. Julie’s doctoral research relates to the effects of text genre and reader-specific variables on reading comprehension in French.

Julie is a regular presenter at foreign language teaching conferences and is the co-founder of Romance Roundtable, a forum to share best teaching practices within the MSU and local Romance language teaching communities.  She also serves as an editor of Tropos, the graduate student journal of the Departments of French, Classics and Italian and Spanish and Portuguese.  Julie was honored to receive the Department of French, Classics, and Italian’s 2005 Outstanding Teaching Assistant Award, 2006 Johannes Sachse Memorial Award, and 2007 Distinguished Contributor Award.

Kari Richards
Language Mentor
German
richa372@msu.edu

Kari Ann (Richards) Randle is a PhD student in MSU's German program.  Growing up in Germany and speaking English in the home allowed her to become a native speaker of both German and English.  Kari’s research interests are broad, ranging from art and visual culture in Berlin to language pedagogy and material development; she has presented at many regional and national conferences on these topics. Since 2000 Kari has been teaching at a variety of universities, including Michigan State University, Albion College, and Kalamazoo College, as well as in Austria with the MSU Study Abroad program.  Currently she is an instructor in German at MSU.