APPLETON, WIS. — Lawrence University has announced the appointment of Brian Pertl as dean of its conservatory of music. As the chief academic and administrative officer of the conservatory, Pertl will be responsible for the educational mission, curricular planning and development for the bachelor of music program, budget planning, recruitment and retention of faculty and faculty-administration relations. He will join the Lawrence administration July 1.
Pertl comes to Lawrence from Microsoft Corporation, where he has been the media acquisitions manager since 1998, overseeing a team of 40 employees, contractors and vendors and managing a $5 million budget. He first joined Microsoft in 1992 as an ethnomusicologist to select, caption and license music for the company’s Encarta World Atlas product.
In addition to his management duties at Microsoft, Pertl serves as a state music scholar for the Smithsonian Institution’s Museum on Main Street traveling exhibit “New Harmonies: Celebrating American Roots Music.” He also has been a lecturer for Washington state’s “Inquiring Mind Lecture Series” for the past 16 years, delivering more than 300 talks on a wide variety of subjects at venues throughout the state.
“Brian is not only a passionate scholar of music but a strong advocate of the liberal arts and of the importance of interactions across disciplines,” said Lawrence President Jill Beck in announcing Pertl’s appointment. “His creativity, vision and leadership will help enhance the position of Lawrence as a nationally prominent institution in the fields of music and music education.”
A native of Salt Lake City, Pertl, 45, is a 1986 graduate of Lawrence, where he earned a bachelor of music degree in performance and a bachelor of arts degree in English. He also holds a master’s degree in ethnomusicology from Wesleyan University and has completed extensive additional coursework and research toward a doctorate degree in ethnomusicology at the University of Washington.
