Deemer receives SUNY Chancellor's Award for Faculty Service

Dr. Rob Deemer, head of Music Composition in the School of Music, has been selected to receive the SUNY Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Faculty Service.

He is one of four SUNY Chancellor’s Award for Excellence recipients named at Fredonia this year.

Dr. Deemer, a composer, conductor, educator, author and advocate, earned his Doctor of Musical Arts degree at the University of Texas at Austin and began teaching at Fredonia in 2007.

His works have been commissioned and performed by the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra, the President’s Own Marine Band, the U.S. Army Orchestra, and the wind ensembles at the University of Texas and the University of Missouri at Kansas City. Also, the Rasçher Saxophone Quartet, loadbang, Akropolis Reed Quintet, Gaudete Brass, cellist Jeffrey Zeigler, violinists Holly Mulcahy and Cornelius Dufallo, soprano Tony Arnold, flutist Lindsay Goodman and saxophonist Zach Shemon.

Within the School of Music Deemer served as faculty advisor for the Ethos New Music Society and chaired its Technology Committee, and campus-wide served as a member of the Faculty and Professional Affairs Committee. From 2012-2016, Deemer served as chair of the Fredonia University Senate and convener of the Campus Governance Leaders Group, and later created Fredonia’s Policy Library, served as writer for the School of Music’s Right Serving-Right Sizing report and as co-chair of the 21st Century Music Student Committee.

Deemer’s continuing work as an advocate for underrepresented composers led him to create the Composer Diversity Database and the Institute for Composer Diversity. He was the recipient of the 2018 ASCAP Deems Taylor/Virgil Thompson Internet Award.

During the 2016-2017 academic year, Deemer was an American Council on Education (ACE) Fellow at Baldwin Wallace University.

As an author, Deemer is well known for his writings for NewMusicBox, Sequenza21 and the New York Times.

Deemer serves as chair and a founding member of the Council of Music Composition of the National Association for Music Education (NAfME), a member of the writing team for the National Coalition for Core Arts Standards, and chair of the Composition and Improvisation Committee for the New York State School Music Association (NYSSMA).

In addition, Deemer is a Composer-in-Residence for the Buffalo Chamber Players and the Harmonia Chamber Singers.

Among his publications is the work, “Improving Shared Governance through Bylaws, Technology, and Collaboration," SUNY Press (2017).