Dr. Kevin Morse honoured with 2020 Tucker Teaching Award

SACKVILLE, NB — Dr. Kevin Morse from Mount Allison University’s Music Department, is the recipient of the 2020 Herbert and Leota Tucker Teaching Award. The Award is Mount Allison’s highest recognition of teaching excellence.

“I’m humbled to be recognized with the Tucker Award this year. Teaching at Mount Allison alongside so many faculty colleagues who really invest in teaching is inspiring,” says Morse. “I appreciate the Tucker family’s long-standing and generous support for teaching excellence at Mount Allison, and the visibility that this award gives to teaching.”

“Kevin Morse’s commitment to his students, the Music department, as well as the university overall is admirable,” says Mount Allison University Provost and Vice-President, Academic and Research Dr. Jeff Ollerhead. “Each year he goes above and beyond to provide his students with an engaging educational experience in a supportive and creative setting. I wish to congratulate him on being named this year’s recipient of the Tucker Teaching Award.”

Morse has taught at Mount Allison since 2011, specializing in Music Composition, Orchestration, and Arranging. He also teaches courses in Opera History and Music in Canada, which are open to students from a wide range of backgrounds, including non-Music students.

Many of Morse’s courses focus on the practical skills of writing music and involve hands-on, experiential learning as students turn their initial ideas into a written score and eventually into a live performance or electronic composition. Discussion-based workshops of works-in-progress form a key part of many of Morse’s classes.

“I think it’s important to create a creative and supportive environment in the classroom, but also one where students can give and receive critical feedback that helps them become better artists,” says Morse. “It’s a vulnerable thing to share a creative composition with your peers, and it’s important that students feel that both I and their classmates are on their side, helping them to do their best work.”

Student composers have their compositions performed in the New Music @ Mount Allison concerts Morse organizes each semester, a series which he started in 2012. And in 2019 he created a new partnership for student composers to create new compositions for the Music Department’s chamber ensembles to perform at the end of the semester. Morse also brings guest artists into his courses to inspire his students, including a film composer and an electronic music composer in 2019.

Morse has also been active as a supervisor of summer student research, working with two Music students last summer. His students have gone on to some of the top graduate programs in Canada, have won composition awards, and have received SSHRC graduate scholarships.

Established by Edmund, Harold and William Tucker in memory of their parents, the Tucker Teaching Award is intended to encourage excellence in teaching at Mount Allison University by acknowledging those who exemplify it.