It is hard to believe that we are now nearly halfway through the 2019-20 academic year. I am pleased to write with this quarterly update.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Our financial plan, put in place nearly three years ago, was designed to support the Peabody Institute\u2019s Breakthrough Plan which has invested in major initiatives including new programs in New Media and Dance, the innovative Breakthrough Curriculum, relaunch and expansion of our Jazz program, significantly increased scholarship aid, and of course continuing to strengthen all core programs while at the same time building a sustainable and stronger financial base. The first two years of this financial plan were overall favorable to budget by $2 million, which in FY18 and FY19 helped reduce planned deficits undertaken as programmatic investments.\u00a0The current 2020 fiscal year projects a smaller deficit and, while still relatively early, we are on target to meet that projection.\u00a0Our plan over the next two years continues to move Peabody to an increasingly positive financial position as various initiatives bear fruit.\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Peabody\u2019s outstanding, world-renowned faculty are known for their teaching prowess.\u00a0At the same time, our faculty are doing enormously exciting things outside of academia.\u00a0While there are simply too many to mention here, I do want to highlight several exciting projects. Professor and Pulitzer-prize winning composer Kevin Puts is on sabbatical this year to finish a commission by the Metropolitan Opera which will star Ren\u00e9e Fleming.\u00a0Also at the Met Opera, Denyce Graves performed in the 2019-20 opening production of Porgy and Bess<\/em>. Sean Jones, the Richard and Elizabeth Case Chair of Peabody\u2019s Jazz department, has co-founded the Baltimore Jazz Collective<\/a> – a consortium designed to create a dynamic cultural platform for regional artists of varied backgrounds, genres, and idioms to generate more opportunities to perform and create new works together.\u00a0This project will be generously funded by the office of Johns Hopkins University President Ron Daniels.\u00a0Faculty bassoonist Brad Balliett, who teaches in Peabody\u2019s Breakthrough Curriculum, is working with Musicambia<\/a> at Sing Sing Prison to teach songwriting to inmates. And it is exciting to note that this summer Peabody Professor and renowned guitarist Manuel Barrueco was inducted into the Guitar Foundation of America\u2019s<\/a> Hall of Fame.\u00a0<\/p>\n We have an outstanding staff at Peabody and we continue to move forward with initiatives designed to drive further success.\u00a0An important recent step was the establishment of the Management Team, comprised of directors and managers across the Institute, who are working to advance strategic objectives and improve and expand our operational and process capacity.\u00a0The group\u2019s inaugural chair is Andrew Kipe, Director of Ensemble Operations.\u00a0Under Andrew\u2019s capable leadership, the group is taking on a series of new initiatives, including working with the Employee Engagement Work Group to implement recommendations made to executive leadership in June.\u00a0The Management Team represents the breadth and depth of talent and skills across all of our staff, and I am excited about the work that they will do on behalf of Peabody.\u00a0<\/p>\n This year Peabody has continued its intense focus on diversity and inclusion.\u00a0As I have noted previously, we are driven by a recognition that as audiences continue to change and evolve, so must our artists and performers evolve to reflect those audiences.\u00a0This is not something that classical music has done with success historically, and that must change.\u00a0For this reason, Peabody has made Diversity a strategic pillar for the Institute, and our work in this area is bearing fruit.\u00a0Today, our underrepresented minority faculty comprise 13 percent of our faculty, which is more than twice what it was just two years ago, and three times that of our peer music schools across the country.\u00a0Similarly, underrepresented minority students make up 14 percent of our student population, and that\u2019s increased 60 percent since 2015. We are committed to continued progress across these important areas and we recognize that the statistics are only part of the challenge. We must be sure that when students come to Peabody, they encounter a welcoming and inclusive environment.\u00a0To that end, we are working to increase access to training opportunities and workshops for students, faculty, and staff to ensure that we are celebrating diversity in all its forms and are institutionally developing the cultural competencies which will only make Peabody and our field stronger for the future.\u00a0<\/p>\n Over the course of this year, Peabody is engaging in a review and development of the next phase of our Breakthrough Plan, which has been the strategic roadmap for the Institute over the last four years.\u00a0In order to accomplish this \u201cdeep dive\u201d on our plan, and reenergize for the future, we have assembled a steering committee supported by ten distinct work groups focused on key areas across the Institute. Together, they are charged with developing a series of strategic goals, and actions to meet those goals over the next five years.\u00a0This robust process, which began in August and will result in an updated plan by April, has more than 90 faculty, staff, students, and alumni engaged as participants. I know they will provide valuable input.<\/p>\n This month marks another milestone in Peabody\u2019s new Breakthrough Curriculum in which students in the new Pitching Your Creative Idea course present final projects, many of which could be contenders to receive funding to implement their projects through the LAUNCH Grant. In this project-based course, students develop and practice essential skills for the 21st century performing artist through designing, proposing and evaluating an artistic project for a setting external to Peabody.\u00a0And just as Peabody launched its Breakthrough Curriculum in recent years, it has also reimagined its approach to career services through fully integrating LAUNCHPad\u2019s resources, personnel, and visiting career experts into the Breakthrough Curriculum. LAUNCHPad celebrates its move into a beautiful new space this month.\u00a0<\/p>\nLeveraging Staff Talent<\/h3>\n
Diversity and Inclusion<\/h3>\n
Breakthrough Plan 2024<\/h3>\n
Reimagining Curriculum and Career<\/h3>\n
Naxos Recording<\/h3>\n