WSU music professor makes case for creativity

Aleksander Sternfeld-Dunn teachers music at Wichita State University. He says that teaching students of all trades about the importance of creativity is essential to making a person better at their craft.

July 25, 2016

What the arts teach us: WSU music professor makes case for creativity

By Roy Wenzl

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The following is an excerpt from the July issue of The Wichita Eagle. (Subscription may be required to view full story.)

As a seventh-grader, he walked past a guitar store one day. That was the beginning.

Aleksander Sternfeld-Dunn began playing guitar, then piano, eventually the stand-up bass. He began to write music that won accolades, and became a teacher and professor at Wichita State University.

The bosses there think he’ll become more than that now.

“We have faculty here who ignore the customary (closed) silos of learning, and that should now be the norm,” said Tony Vizzini, WSU’s provost and vice president for academic affairs. “He’s developed interesting ideas about how people learn.”

Read the full story.