Thank you to everyone who voted in this year's Band Alumni Society Executive Council elections -- a total of 125 ballots were cast.  The results are as follows:

2009 President-Elect - Matthew Hanley
2009 Treasurer-Elect - Curtis Weyrauch
2009 Secretary-Elect - Charlie Smith

New Council Representatives (terms expire 12/31/2010)
Heather Clark, Matt Dockendorf, and Mary Stepnick

The newest edition of the Quarternote is now available online, and features information on Homecoming 2008, the Annual General Membership Meeting, and the 3rd Annual Band Alumni Social.

You can find the Quarternote in our Library section (under Quarternote Archives), or click here to go directly to the Fall 2008 edition.  Please note that UMBAS members who have not opted out of direct mailings will have a hard copy of the Quarternote sent to them.

The School of Music has a new director, and the U. of M. Marching Band has a new assistant director. 

Dr. David Myers, a music professor at Georgia State University, was named director of the School of Music on Thursday, July 17.  An full announcement of his appointment was posted on the School of Music website.  Myers replaces Noel Zahler, who is now head of Carnegie Mellon University's School of Music.

(Courtesy of the U. of M. Marching Band)  Dr. Alicia Neal has accepted the position of Assistant Director of Bands and Assistant Director of Marching Band at the University of Minnesota.

Dr. Neal comes to the U. from St. Xavier University in Chicago. Prior to that she completed her doctoral work at Northwestern University and did her master's and undergraduate work at Colorado University. She also taught for 3 years in Humble, Texas.

Dr. Neal replaces Dr. Mary Schneider, who has taken the position of Director of Bands at Eastern Michigan University.  We wish Dr. Schneider all the best, and thank her for three great years at Minnesota.

As you may have noticed, there is a new bit of content on the site. The Executive Council considered and approved a request from a former band member to advertise his small business on the web site in exchange for a small fee and potential scholarship donations. During the course of this discussion, the option of adding a small, unobtrusive section of text-based ads with the specific purpose of covering the costs associated with hosting the web site.

If you have strong feelings about this proposal please let us know. The current plan is to conduct a trial period of 9 months for this content and evaluate the appropriateness and effectiveness at that time, but the feedback and concerns of our membership are important to us.