WINSTON-SALEM – The University of North Carolina School of the Arts (UNCSA) has announced the recipients of the prestigious William R. Kenan, Jr. Excellence Awards, which pay for tuition, fees, room and board.

Award recipients for 2008-09 are:

• Leigh-Ann Friedel, Marlton, N.J.
• Luis Herrera, Kenosha, Wisc.
• Hannah Lee, Fayetteville, Ga.
• Stephanie Norman, Windsor Locks, Conn.
• Corinne Serfass, Winston-Salem

The awards are provided by a 2005 grant of $1 million from The William R. Kenan, Jr. Charitable Trust. UNCSA makes five awards per year.

“We are delighted to announce these Kenan Excellence Award recipients,” said UNCSA Chancellor John Mauceri. “They exemplify the kind of student who will blossom in our professional artist training programs: creative, talented, intelligent, dedicated, disciplined – in a word, extraordinary.

“Without support from The William R. Kenan, Jr. Charitable Trust,” Chancellor Mauceri continued, “the University of North Carolina School of the Arts would see these highly recruited students go elsewhere.”

Dr. Richard M. Krasno, executive director of the Trust, said: “The William R. Kenan, Jr. Charitable Trust established this new scholarship program to demonstrate our confidence in the exceptional educational experience the University of North Carolina School of the Arts provides to talented student-artists from around the world. It is our hope that this grant will stimulate others to join us by providing similar scholarship support for very talented students who wish to attend UNCSA.”

The Kenan Excellence Awards were first presented in 2006-07. The Kenan Charitable Trust grant will provide a total of 20 students with full scholarships over a seven-year period. Awards are renewable for up to four years as long as the student continues in good standing.

Criteria for the scholarship awards include the students’ abilities in their arts discipline, grade point average, SAT or ACT test scores, capacity to lead and motivate, and extracurricular achievement.  A review committee establishes a list of semifinalists, who are interviewed for selection as finalists. Awards are made to students judged to have the best potential as artist-scholars regardless of the program in which they enroll or their state of residence. 

The award recipients for 2008-09 are:

Leigh-Ann Friedel

Friedel, who will be entering the School of Design and Production to study set design, is a graduate of Lenape High School in Medford, N.J., where she completed many honors and AP classes. She is a member of the National Honor Society, the National French Honors Society and the National Art Honors Society, and ranks in the top 7 percent of her class. 

Friedel was vice president of her school’s chapter of Amnesty International, the visual arts editor of her school newspaper, and a dedicated and tireless contributor to her school’s theatre. In addition, she held a part-time job as a waitress to save money for college. Her theatre experience includes working as prop designer, T-shirt designer, set painting assistant, member of the stage crew, set designer, make-up artist, dancer and actress for four years. She designed the set for The Imaginary Invalid; and was set painter for Harvey and Into the Woods.

In her personal statement, Friedel noted she wants “to create worlds that will spark the imagination of spectators young and old. It will be my pleasure to be part of a team whose main goal is to create a production that will bring people joy.”

Luis Herrera

Luis Herrera is a recent graduate of Bradford High School, which has one of the strongest high school theatre programs in the country. There, he ranked 91 out of 471. He was a recipient of a 2007 Minority Academic Achievement Recognition Award.  Herrera’s extracurricular activities include participation in community blood drives and helping secure clothing for the needy.

During his high school years, he has appeared in many theatre productions, including the roles of Bernardo in West Side Story; the Beast in Beauty and the Beast; Curly in Oklahoma!; Charles Guiteau in Assassins; Judas in Jesus Christ Superstar; Che Guavara in Evita; Sweeny Todd in Sweeny Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street MTI Student Edition; and Collins in the world premiere of the MTI Student Edition of Rent. He also participated in the national cast of the world premiere of the MTI Student Edition of Thoroughly Modern Millie.

Herrera noted in his personal statement, “I regard the theatre as the greatest of all art forms, the most immediate way in which a human being can share with another the sense of what it is to be a human being.” 

Herrera will enter the School of Drama at UNCSA, where another Kenan Excellence Award Scholar from his high school, Braxton Molinaro, currently is a sophomore.

Hannah Lee

Hannah Lee has been accepted in the UNCSA School of Design and Production, where she will study set design. She recently graduated from Fayette County High School, where she served as president of the Key Club, led fund-raising projects for UNICEF, March of Dimes and the Georgia Sheriff’s Youth Homes. She also has been a volunteer for Habitat for Humanity and the ASPCA.

In her personal statement, Lee states, “My life as yet has been a spinning whirl of dreary economic classes where the windows yearn to open their lids and beat their dusty velvet lashes; where the walls of my math class stretch to open way for other worldly creatures; and where my broken mirrors rearrange themselves and spring up on my walls into fantastic, towering beasts. I have worked honestly as a high school student in preparing for a life of stage design, and I look forward to working with the utmost devotion at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts.”

Stephanie Norman

Norman, who will enter UNCSA’s School of Music, studying voice, graduated from the Greater Hartford Academy of the Arts (GHAA) in Hartford, Conn., where she was accepted by audition and ranked seventh in her class. Her voice teacher at GHAA noted that Norman is one of the most conscientious, dependable, capable students with whom she has worked: “She consistently performs at the top of her class, in both her academic and performance classes. She exhibits a work ethic far beyond her teen-age years.”

Her high school academic classes were either honors or advanced placement, and she is a member of the National Honor Society. As a junior, she received the Brown University Book Award “for academic excellence with clarity in written and spoken expression.” Her extensive vocal repertoire includes solo classical works from Bach to Britten, choral work from numerous operas, musical theatre, and solo jazz works.

At GHAA, Norman sang the roles of Eulalie Shinn in The Music Man, Violetta in Opera Academy Style and Alexandra Giddens in Regina. She also performed with Caroling for Dialysis Children at Hartford Children’s Hospital, the Annual Hartford Festival of Lights, and the Mark Twain House Holiday Concert.  She was accepted by audition for CulturArte for Creative Youth in Cape Verda, Africa – a two-week intensive arts program. Norman noted in her essay on this life-changing trip, that although there were language barriers with the people, “They taught me what it’s like to not be afraid and to share your art because it is your passion. They taught me that if you are truly passionate, no matter what, you will be accepted and loved and we forget that sometimes. Art is not about being the best. It’s not about getting the best part in the show or painting the best picture or writing the best composition. It’s about making an impact in the lives of people around you. Art is about the senses. It’s meant to be heard and seen and tasted and felt. It’s tangible emotions.”

Corinne Serfass

Corinne Serfass will enter UNCSA’s School of Design and Production, where she will study costume design. She is a 2008 graduate of R.J. Reynolds High School, where she took AP and Honors courses, and was a member of the National Honor Society.

Her theatre background includes acting in several productions and serving as costumer for A Midsummer Night’s Dream (in the seventh grade); I Never Saw Another Butterfly, Thoroughly Modern Millie, Shakespeare in Hollywood and My Fair Lady. In addition, she has worked as an usher and on the technical staff and crew at R.J. Reynolds Auditorium and as assistant stage manager for the National Black Theatre Festival (2007).

In her personal statement, she noted: “Over the course of taking private art lessons, I found that much of the art in the world around me, which I had long envied and tried to emulate, spoke to me in a way that called me to work with it.  I’ve always been inspired by the elegant simplicities found in nature, especially relating to the human form, so after some exploration of those interests, I enrolled in my school’s beginning art class, and haven’t looked back since.”

 

The William R. Kenan, Jr. Charitable Trust was established in 1965 from the estate of William Rand Kenan, Jr., who was born in Wilmington in 1872 and graduated from UNC in 1894. Kenan was a scientist, chemical and mechanical engineer, business executive, dairy farmer and philanthropist. 

The Kenan family has a long history of support for the University of North Carolina School of the Arts. Thomas S. Kenan III, of Chapel Hill, for whom the Thomas S. Kenan Institute for the Arts at UNCSA is named, is an honorary member of the School’s Board of Trustees, a member of its Board of Visitors, and is a founder of UNCSA.

The University of North Carolina School of the Arts is the first state-supported, residential school of its kind in the nation. Established as the North Carolina School of the Arts by the N.C. General Assembly in 1963, UNCSA opened in Winston-Salem (“The City of the Arts”) in 1965 and became part of the University of North Carolina system in 1972. More than 1,100 students from middle school through graduate school train for careers in the arts in five professional schools: Dance, Design and Production (including a Visual Arts Program), Drama, Filmmaking, and Music. UNCSA is the state’s only public arts conservatory, dedicated entirely to the professional training of talented students in the performing, visual and moving image arts. For more information, visit www.ncarts.edu.

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