JANE BROWN honored with P.E.O. Scholar Award
From left: Jenni Cesarin, committee member, Jane Brown, Scholar Award recipient, and Toddy Cutler, committee chairman. Photo submittedJane Brown, a resident of Reno, Nevada and D.M.A. student at University of Nevada, Las Vegas, is one of 100 doctoral students in the U. S. and Canada selected to receive a $15,000 Scholar Award from the P.E.O. Sisterhood. She was sponsored by Chapter WH of Lake Almanor, California.
Jane grew up in the arts-loving mountain communities of the Northern Sierra Nevada and is the daughter of Ruth and Ed Sylvester, formerly of Lake Almanor. She graduated from Brigham Young University, Provo, with her Bachelor of Music, magna cum laudein 1988; and from California State University, Chico, with her Master of Arts, with distinctionin 1994.
Brown currently serves as the conductor and artistic director of the Reno Pops Orchestra. She is also the conductor of the Ruby Mountain Symphony and Northern Nevada String Serenade, as well as the Chester Community Chorus. She has taught music in the public schools of Northern Nevada and Northern California since 1989—and is currently serving as director of orchestras and choirs at Proctor R. Hug High School in Reno, Nevada.
Jane has been invited to guest conduct professional orchestras in St. Petersburg and many of the provincial capital cities of the Russian Federation; where she also engages in field research on the influence of the ethnic folk music of the North Caucasus and Middle Volga regions on the Soviet and modern composers of those regions.
The P.E.O. Scholar Awards were established in 1991 to provide substantial merit-based awards for women of the United States and Canada who are pursuing a doctoral-level degree at an accredited college or university. Scholar Awards recipients are a select group of women chosen for their high level of academic achievement and their potential for having a positive impact on society.
The P.E.O. Sisterhood, founded January 21, 1869, at Iowa Wesleyan College, Mount Pleasant, Iowa, is a philanthropic educational organization dedicated to supporting higher education for women. Â There are approximately 6,000 local chapters in the United States and Canada with nearly a quarter of a million active members.
