For its annual spring concert, the SNC Choir will be presenting ELIJAH, an oratorio by Felix Mendelssohn, in celebration of his 200th birthday. The concert, which will be performed under the direction of Donna Roberts Axton, SNC program chair of music, is scheduled for Friday, March 27, and Saturday, March 28 at 7:30pm at St. Patrick’s Episcopal Church in Incline Village, and again on April 5 (Palm Sunday) at the Squaw Valley Chapel at 3:30 pm.

Tickets are $15 at the door, or $12 in advance (at the Potlatch in Incline, Scraps Dog Bakery in Kings Beach, or at Pablo’s Gallery in Tahoe City), and $10 for students and seniors. Tickets may also be purchased from choir members.

Donna Axton teaches classes in music theory, music history, humanities, voice, and piano at Sierra Nevada College. For more information on the concert, please call her at 775.881.7586 or email her at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

Sierra Nevada College announced that its renowned summer art workshops in Lake Tahoe are now in their 25th year.

The program, started by ceramics instructor Carol Sphar at the college's old mountain campus, received its funding from the Luria family, for whom the ceramics studio was named (longtime residents may recall the Luria Art Building).

Sierra Nevada College is proud that its popular program has thrived for a quarter-century, since the notion of sustainability is at the forefront of its mission statement.

As current chair of the Fine Arts Department Sheri Leigh O'Connor noted, "Our workshops continue to sustain themselves even in the current bad economic climate." Some of the Who's Who in the art world who have taught the summer workshops include Richard Shaw, Linda Arbuckle, and Gregory Kondos, and the offerings have expanded beyond ceramics to include glass fusing, painting, metalsmithing, photography, printmaking, digital art, and videography.

Workshops begin June 1 and run through July 31. On Tuesday nights each week during the workshops, the college will host its "Meet the Artist" lecture, which will be followed by an informal reception in the Tahoe Gallery (located in the Prim Library, 3rd floor, on the SNC campus)-both are free and open to the public. The Gallery will also be displaying all of the summer artists' work. The workshops can be taken either for personal enrichment or college credit.

Following is the 2009 schedule:

Ceramics:
Nick Joerling/Pots/Possibilities/June 1-5
Stan Welsh/Heads Up: Ceramic Sculpture/June 8-12
Richard Shaw/Silkscreened Transfers & Plaster Molds/June 15-19
Randy Brodnax & Don Ellis/Fast Fire Pottree/June 22-26
Marc Lancet/Beginning Pottery Wheel Throwing/ July 6-10
Linda & Charlie Riggs/Alternative Firing with Precision & Abandon/July 13-17

Bill van Gilder/Set Your Table!/July 20-24
Christa Assad/Ready, Set, THROW!/July 27-31

Glass Fusing & Slumping:
Carole & William Hutchison/Beginning Glass Fusing /June 8-12
Carole & William Hutchison/Advanced Glass Fusing /June 15-19

Metalsmithing:
Greg Wilbur/Moving Metal: The Art of Raising/June 15-19

Painting:
Gregory Kondos/Contemporary Tahoe Landscape /July 6-10
Phyllis Shafer/Plein Air Landscape Painting/July 13-17

Photography:
Jerry Dodrill/Digital Photography/June 22-26

Printmaking:
Sarah Whorf/Hot Off the Press/June 1-5

Digital Art:
Tim Guthrie/Digital Art Techniques/July 20-24

Videography:
Joe Pennella/Digital Storytelling/July 27-31
Weekend Workshops

Ceramics:
Glenn Grishkoff/Hand Made Brushes/June 13-14
Nancy Selvin/Color & Screen Printing on Clay Forms/July 18-19

Glass:
Carole Hutchison/Kaleidoscopes /June 13-14
For more information on registration, tuition, workshop times, and housing, please contact Sheri Leigh O'Connor, Workshops Director, at 775.881.7588 or This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

Ski Business and Resort Management Program Chair Tim Cohee announced that Sierra Nevada College student Branden Heaps has been named Ski Area Management's 2009 College Recruit of the Year. For this honor, Branden has won an all-expenses-paid trip to the National Ski Areas Association (NSAA) Convention this May in Marco Island, Florida, courtesy of Ski Area Management (SAM) magazine and NSAA. The magazine, considered the industry's bible, will also be profiling Branden as the No. 1 college ski-resort recruit in the nation in its March issue. Commenting on his win, Branden stated, "I am honored to be chosen out of the many talented individuals who entered this contest. Winning this award highlights the Ski Business Program at Sierra Nevada College, as well as the high level of education it offers. I look forward to a future in the ski industry and all of the opportunities that come with it."

"Our Ski Business and Resort Management Program (SBRM) is producing top talent for the nation's ski industry, and Branden Heaps is a shining example of the type of college graduate that will be a real catch for any resort," said Cohee. "He has a solid grasp of the business, has scored straight A's across the ski-business curriculum, has spent the past four years both working for resorts and performing internships, and will hit the ground running in a variety of entry management roles."

Recruit entries in the contest (now in its third year) are judged by industry leaders and SAM staff, with judges then narrowing the field to their top three choices.  Last year's winner, Eric Kelleher from Lyndon State College, now works with Jack Turner at Snow Monsters, a national ski and snowboard program for kids (the Snow Monster characters are also the official mascots of the U.S. Ski & Snowboard Teams). Kelleher met Jack while at the NSAA convention last May in San Francisco.

For more information, go to the contest's Web site at www.saminfo.com/events/sammy_recruit_of_the_year.php

On the contest's origins, SAM Assistant Editor Elizabeth Eren said, "We created this contest because we continually hear from the ski resorts and ski area suppliers alike about the need to foster our next crop of industry leaders, managers, and innovative thinkers. I joined this industry as a college senior myself working for SAM and it's been an indescribable experience. The people running ski resorts I idolized as a kid are now peers who I luckily get to work with day in and day out."

Sierra Nevada College President Robert Maxson was thrilled by the news. "I want to congratulate Branden on being named 2009 College Recruit of the Year. He represents the very best of Sierra Nevada College, and we're so proud of him. This award also speaks to the quality of our Ski Business & Resort Management Program and to the leadership of Tim Cohee in his role as chair of that program."

Awards were given out under various categories to individuals and organizations throughout the State. As the project was the first LEED Platinum project in Reno area and a research facility related to the environment, the Tahoe Center received the Leadership Award in Research from the Northern chapter of the USGBC-NV.