Two students studying music in the West Virginia University College of Creative Arts �€Biljana Bozinovska and Pawalai Tanchanpong �€have been awarded $1,000 scholarships from the Valerie Canady Charitable Trust Foundation.
The scholarships are named for Valerie Canady, a Morgantown native and WVU graduate who was among the 270 people who died in the crash of Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, in December 1988. Authorities later found the tragedy to be the result of a terrorist bomb.
Loulie and William Canady, Valeries parents, present the awards annually. Loulie Canady is a long-time supporter of the WVU Division of Music; William Canady is professor emeritus of the Department of Biochemistry in the WVU School of Medicine.
Biljana Bozinovska , a native of Bitola, Macedonia, is in her final year of undergraduate study at WVU where she is a music composition/cello performance major. She is a model student who carries a 3.92 cumulative average, while also working 20 hours a week supervising the electronic music lab (a job she has held throughout her four years at WVU ). This year, she will be performing a major cello recital as well as putting on a full concert of her own music. Prior to coming to WVU , she attended Interlochen, where she did a year of postgraduate study on full scholarship in 1998-99 and worked as a music theory and electronic music teaching assistant.
“She is an outstanding young cellist, who enjoys taking on challenging repertoire and works very hard to perfect her musical and technical skills,”said Professor of Cello William Skidmore.”Currently she is working on the Dvorak Concerto, one of the most difficult works for the cello and one usually reserved for study by graduate students. She is one of the top students in our program.”
Pawalai Tanchanpong , a native of Bangkok, Thailand, has maintained an outstanding record of achievement both as a scholar and performer at WVU since her initial audition for the masters degree program in 1998. She completed her master of music degree in May 2000 with a 4.0 grade point average and is in the third year of work on the doctor of musical arts. Her dissertation focuses on teaching piano to senior citizens, and she also teaches piano lessons in the WVU Community Music Program.
“Pawalai is outstanding both academically and musically,”said James Miltenberger, professor of piano.”Her masters oral exam was one of the strongest we have seen in the past several years at WVU . She is an excellent pianist and was selected to perform the Grieg Piano Concerto with the National Symphony of Thailand in the summer of 2000 at the National Symphony Hall in Bangkok. She also performed the Rachmaninoff Paganini Variations with that same Symphony Orchestra this past summer.”
Valerie Canady graduated Phi Beta Kappa and summa cum laude from WVU with bachelors degrees in Business and Economics (Accounting) and Spanish. She also held an MBA from WVU and a masters degree in Spanish from the University of Madrid, having earned both degrees simultaneously and again graduating summa cum laude. At the time of the crash, she was working in the London Office of the Pittsburgh-based H.J. Heinz Co. and was on her way home for the Christmas holiday. She was named outstanding WVU teaching assistant in Business and Economics and in Languages on three separate occasions.
In addition to a high grade-point average and faculty references, the scholarship requires that recipients be fluent in two languages. Mrs. Canady said Valerie was a great believer in everyone speaking more than one language. She was studying French and Italian during the last few months of her life.