ATLANTA—The College of the Arts is pleased to announce the recipients of the 2020 Outstanding Faculty Awards including Alexander Freund for Outstanding Junior Faculty Award, Christina West for Outstanding Senior Faculty Award and Neill Prewitt for Outstanding Teaching Award. As this year has introduced unique challenges, the awards recognize the superior accomplishments of the faculty and their exceptional commitment to our students, as well as their efforts to elevate the arts at Georgia State University and beyond.
Each recipient is nominated and selected by their peers according to robust criteria, which considers publishing, exhibiting, presenting and performing among other scholarly and artistic contributions to their field.
Alexander Freund - School of Music, Assistant Professor, Trumpet
"Outstanding Junior Faculty Award"
Freund is a founding member of the renowned brass quintet M5 MEXICAN BRASS since 2005. He has performed hundreds of concerts at international festivals and venues on five continents. He was Co-Principal Trumpet at the Opera Bremen, soloist at Deutsches Theater Berlin and has been invited to play with the Berlin State Opera, the WDR Radio Symphony Orchestra Cologne, the NDR Radio Symphony Orchestra Hannover and Tenerife Symphony Orchestra in Spain. From 2003 until 2018 he lived in México where he was principal trumpet of the Symphony Orchestras of Michoacán and Nuevo Leon.
Christina West - Ernest G. Welch School of Art & Design, Associate Professor, Ceramics
"Outstanding Senior Faculty Award"
Christina West has been teaching Georgia State students how to unleash the latent potential in lumpen matter since 2009. Her personal creative work incorporates the realistically rendered human figure, sculpted at a 3/4 life-size scale. Her figures are often grouped together in an installation format that sets up narrative expectations. West completed her M.F.A. from the New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University, and she has been an artist-in-residence at the Archie Bray Foundation, The Bemis Center for Contemporary Art and The Clay Studio in Philadelphia. Currently, “She Looks”, a sculptural video installation is featured at the Atlanta Contemporary as a part of the 2020 “She Is Here” all-female group exhibition.
Neill Prewitt - Ernest G. Welch School of Art & Design, Lecturer, Foundations
"Outstanding Teaching Award"
Prewitt‘s artistic practice consists of music and video production, performance and installation. His work has been exhibited at the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University in Durham, NC; Lump, and Flanders Gallery in Raleigh, NC; and screened at the Low Museum in Atlanta. He received his M.F.A. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and at Georgia State. Prewitt anchors the Two-Dimensional Design area of the school’s foundation program and teaches graphic design courses.