The Faculty Senate at Bowling Green State University has honored Distinguished Artist Professor Marilyn
Shrude with the Lifetime Achievement Award.
She received the $1,000 award at the recent Faculty Excellence Awards. She has spent 37 years of her
professional life at BGSU. An internationally known composer, Shrude is also an expert teacher,
administrator, community liaison and advocate for contemporary music.
She has spent 37 years of her professional life at BGSU, during which both she and the College of Musical
Arts have experienced enormous growth. An internationally known composer, Shrude is also an expert
teacher, administrator, community liaison and advocate for contemporary music.
She played a critical role in establishing a doctoral program in contemporary music at BGSU in 2005, the
first of its kind in the country, and is now the director of the program and its acting graduate
coordinator.
She was the chair of the Department of Musicology, Composition and Theory from 1998-2011; was a founder
and director of BGSU’s MidAmerican Center for Contemporary Music; a co-founder and former director of
the New Music Festival, and led five study-abroad programs for BGSU students in Italy.
"These experiences represented life-changing events for many of our music students," wrote
nominator Dr. Mary Natvig, assistant dean of the college and a professor of musicology, composition and
theory.
As a composer and musician, Shrude has received numerous awards and broken new ground in her field.
"Dr. Shrude’s music is known for its lyrical, highly linear and multilayered sounds that result in a
bright, shimmering and delicately wrought sound world," Natvig wrote. "Marilyn has been
awarded prestigious honors by the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Rockefeller Foundation,
Chamber Music America/ASCAP, the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation.She was
also the first woman to receive the Kennedy Center Friedheim Awards for Orchestral Music and the
Cleveland Arts Prize for Music."
Her compositions have been performed across the United States, in Europe and in Asia, and she has been a
guest artist at festivals around the world. Nearly 20 of her compositions have been recorded on various
labels.
She has been commissioned to compose pieces by various orchestras, most recently the Brave New Works
Ensemble and the Walla Walla Chamber Music Festival.
Shrude holds a bachelor’s degree from Alverno College and a master’s degree and doctorate from
Northwestern University. She began teaching at BGSU in 1977.
(Story from BGSU Marketing and Communications.)