Two UL professors have received a national award for their piano software.
Susanna Garcia and Chan Kiat Lim, both of Lafayette, were honored by Music Teachers National Association with the Frances Clark Keyboard Pedagogy Award for their product eNovativePiano during the 2021 MTNA National Conference. eNovative Piano is an online multimedia curriculum that teaches students piano.
The Frances Clark Keyboard Pedagogy Award is an annual award established through a bequest to MTNA by the renowned pedagogue, the late Frances Clark. It is given to a person or company who has made significant contributions to the field of keyboard pedagogy through the creation and development of products and publications that further the profession.
Garcia holds MM and DMA degrees from the University of Texas at Austin and a BM degree from Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi. She is professor of music at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, where she has taught since 1990. Susie holds the Ruth Stodghill Girard Regents Endowed Professorship in Music and in 2001 was named a University of Louisiana Distinguished Professor. In 2012, she was honored as an MTNA FOUNDATION Fellow, and in 2013 she received the Outstanding Teacher Award from the Louisiana MTA. Her work in developing eNovativePiano was recognized with the 2015 “Research Excellence Award” for the University of Louisiana at Lafayette College of the Arts and in the 2019 Piano Magazine article “Piano Pedagogy’s Towers of Technology.”
Susie has performed concerts across the United States and in Canada, Mexico, Italy, and Ghana. She performs with William Chapman Nyaho as the Nyaho/Garcia Duo.
Lim is professor at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, where he is the Margaret Chauvin Steen Villemez Professor in Music. In 2015, Chan Kiat was awarded the Louisiana Music Teachers Association Outstanding Teacher Award. In the same year, he received the Distinguished Professor Award from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. He teaches piano performance, keyboard literature, class piano, and he lectures in the Interdisciplinary Humanities Program and Study Abroad Program in Florence, Italy. In 2020, he was honored as an MTNA FOUNDATION Fellow. His students have captured top prizes and awards at regional, national and international piano competitions.
Chan Kiat received music certifications in piano, violin, and theory from the ABRSM and the Trinity College of Music, London. He holds a BM degree from West Virginia University and MM and DMA degrees from the College-Conservatory of Music at University of Cincinnati. He has performed solo and chamber recitals in Canada, China, Germany, Greece, Italy, Jamaica, Romania, Malaysia, and throughout the United States including solo performances at Music at Penn Alps Concert Series in Maryland and Steinway Hall in New York City.
MTNA is a nonprofit organization of independent and collegiate music teachers committed to furthering the art of music through teaching, performance, composition and scholarly research. Founded in 1876, MTNA is the oldest professional music teachers association in the United States
