Joshua Bell to be appointed Professor at IU

May 3, 2007 at 1:40 AM

Josh Bell is coming to teach at IU?? That's kinda weird, but anyway.. Seems like after bringing names like Mark Kaplan, Alex Kerr and Jaime Laredo to the violin roaster they want to top this by bringing a good old Hoosier to the faculty.. My only question is this: Is he going to teach at all? It has been my previous experience on a similar issue with Maxim Vengerov when he came to teach as professor to my school in Germany. He was hardly there and although he was a very good teacher when he was there it was hard to keep track like a normal teacher should do no matter the level of his students. He ended up dropping students, just listening to a few of us from time to time and eventually leaving. Is the same going to happen with Joshua Bell? We'll see.. Comments welcome..

From Yixi Zhang
Posted on May 3, 2007 at 3:08 AM

Gerardo,

Why not write him a welcome letter and remind him not to repeat the same mistake of the others. Or even better, get the letter signed by the student body so that'll give him something to think about. New profs are trainable like puppies so don't miss the window of opportunity.

Good luck.

From Ihnsouk Guim
Posted on May 3, 2007 at 11:03 AM

Yixi - Dream on. High profile new profs are more like fully grown bulls not puppies. The appointment is another feather on his cap and a gold plated plaque for the school. Real teaching is not likely to come about from someone so intent to perform. Why do schools resort to this strategy? Does it really benefit to divert resources to pay for an empty appointment and demoralize lesser known but hard working existing faculty?

Ihnsouk

From Gerardo Ubaghs
Posted on May 3, 2007 at 12:35 PM

I don't think it'll be of any real influence to other existing faculty members here at IU, as far as the very well considered faculty members that include Mark Kaplan, Jaime Laredo, Alex Kerr, etc. Each one of them has a very good reputation as teachers and some of them still as excellent performers worlwide, so my only concern really is the avalanche of students that are going to come to school thinking that he is actually going to teach and what might or might not happen in the future regarding that. It's great in any case for us, I'm studying with Kaplan and he's great, also really cool about you playing for any faculty member, so it's always a win-win situation for existing students like me who have a caring and fully commited professor as well as excellent soloist and can also rely on the other faculty members for more lessons, etc. Not so cool for the future Bell students if he is not going to teach so often, the same with Laredo students, some of them complain he's sometimes not enough time teaching here at IU. But.. We'll see..

From Tom Holzman
Posted on May 3, 2007 at 4:05 PM

One question is can he teach? We'll see. The other question is will anyone be able to learn anything from him that they could not learn from a lesser-known violinist? Probably not, but we'll see.

From Elizabeth Smith
Posted on May 3, 2007 at 8:45 PM

He'll only be there one week per semester, according to the article Laurie posted.

From Gerardo Ubaghs
Posted on May 4, 2007 at 8:21 AM

That's right, doesn't look like he's going to be a real full time prof. Sorry, they didn't tell us in the email they sent us the night before the official press release. Anyway, life is good whatever happens ;D It'll definitelly be a good addition to a great roster of faculty members to play for!

This entry has been archived and is no longer accepting comments.

Joshua Bell to be appointed Professor at IU

Subscribe

Laurie's Books