Dr. Bret Pimentel with the Department of Music.The time has come again to recognize arts and humanities across Mississippi colleges and universities.
The Mississippi Humanities Council celebrates each October by awarding one humanities faculty member at each state institution with the Humanities Teacher Award.
This year, from Delta State University’s Department of Music, Dr. Bret Pimentel has been selected by faculty as the award recipient.
“I was selected by my colleagues here in the department,” said Pimentel. “That means a lot to know that they thought of me. Any one of them could have received this honor, and it’s very nice of them to have picked me for it.”
Pimentel will give a presentation as his department’s representative on Oct. 21 at 7 p.m. in the Fielding Wright Art Center. The presentation is made possible through a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Pimentel’s discussion is titled “Woodwind Doublers and Other Jacks-of-All-Trades: The benefits of failing to specialize in a highly-specialized academic world.”
“I will be talking about specialization in academia,” he added. “Usually people who become professors specialize in one little, tiny part of their field. What I did instead was get my graduate degrees in multiple instruments, which is unusual in music.
“I’m going to talk a little about that — playing multiple woodwind instruments, teaching multiple woodwind instruments, and why it’s usual and how it sometimes can be a benefit to not specialize so much.”
As an assistant professor of music, Pimentel has been teaching at Delta State since 2009. He instructs courses involving various woodwind instruments, including the oboe, clarinet, bassoon and saxophone. He is also the director of the DSU Jazz Ensemble.
Pimentel joked that he doesn’t remember what he does in his spare time.
“Really, music is my career but it’s also my hobby,” he said. “Sometimes the lines get blurry between what’s work and what I’m doing in my spare time.”
Learn more about the Mississippi Humanities Council at www.mshumanities.org.
