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Dr. Barbara Hamel will be honored with Dana College’s highest alumni honor Sept. 30 in Blair, Neb., when the college bestows upon her the title of "Distinguished Alumna," at a special ceremony held as part of Homecoming festivities.

Honorees are chosen for their achievements after leaving Dana College. In Hamel’s case, her dedication to providing a quality, liberal arts education to thousands of students was the determining factor.

After graduating from Dana in 1985 with a bachelor of science degree in music and religion, Hamel earned a master’s degree in music from the University of Nebraska and a doctoral degree in music education from the University of Missouri-Columbia. She has served at Central Methodist University in Fayette, Mo., since 1996, and currently holds the title of associate professor of music.

Despite the challenges of working at a smaller private institution, Hamel has relished the opportunity to provide her students with the same sort of quality liberal arts education she received at Dana. She volunteers to teach CMU’s Character and Life course, in which students spend 90 percent of their time reading and discussing. As a keyboard instructor at three different institutions of higher learning, she has inspired hundreds of students to continue to pursue the arts along with more monetarily profitable career-training studies.

“I never planned to be a college music teacher, but that (happily) is where I’ve been led,” Hamel said. “My students often ask me where I got my undergraduate degree, and I tell them to picture their own college and just insert a Lutheran theme rather than Methodist. Central Methodist University and Dana College are eerily similar: both small, set in a rural community on a beautiful campus, of a liberal arts tradition, church related, and know for personal attention to students and an extremely dedicated faculty.”

Beyond her attention to a liberal arts education, nominator Nathan Krämer cited Hamel’s long list of published academic articles as evidence of her achievements. Hamel has published in Piano Guild Notes, Teaching Music, Assessment Update and Missouri School Music Magazine. A sample work, "Playing piano across the curriculum: Preparing our music majors for the real world," reveals her continued dedication to a broad-based learning environment.