Meet Our Dean

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Stephanie Caulder, a native of Wilmington, North Carolina, serves as Dean of the College of Visual and Performing Arts at Radford University. Prior to her appointment at Radford, Caulder served as Professor of Music and Department Chair at Indiana University of Pennsylvania (IUP) from 2002-2022. She earned the D.M. in oboe performance from Florida State University, and the M.M. in multiple woodwind performance and B.A. in Music from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Caulder’s primary performance teachers include Eric Ohlsson, Ashley Barret, and James Prodan, oboe; Kelly Burke, clarinet; and John Locke and James Croft, conducting. 

Caulder is currently the principal oboist of the Johnstown Symphony Orchestra and the Keystone Wind Ensemble and has performed with many orchestras and chamber ensembles throughout Pennsylvania and the southeast, including the Altoona Symphony, Tallahassee Symphony, Pensacola Symphony, Southeastern Chamber Orchestra, Opera a la carte, Greensboro Symphony, Charlotte Philharmonic, Charlotte Repertory, and the Wilmington Symphony Orchestras. In October 2015, she toured Russia and performed with the IUP Faculty Woodwind Quintet in venues in St. Petersburg and at the Moscow Conservatory. Caulder also presented masterclasses at the Rimsky-Korsakov Conservatory while in St. Petersburg and at the Wind College in Moscow. 

She has appeared with artists such as Bernadette Peters, Mannheim Steamroller, Cirque Musica, Joshua Bell, Denyce Graves, Frank Sinatra, Jr., and Marvin Hamlisch. Caulder is a member of the International Double Reed Society and was an invited artist/presenter at the 2003, 2007, 2008, 2012, 2016, and 2022 IDRS conferences. Her discography includes 12 commercial recordings as principal oboist with the Keystone Wind Ensemble; a Koch International recording of Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Ellen Taaffe Zwilich’s concertos with the Kalichstein/Laredo/Robinson trio and Michael Stern, conductor; and a 2013 Klavier Music Productions release, Five in the Sun (K 11193) as oboist with the Keystone Chamber Players.

As an active scholar and adjudicator, Caulder has written articles for the North Carolina Music Educators Journal and the Double Reed, the publication for the International Double Reed Society. Caulder is a national honorary member of Delta Omicron and an active member of the International Double Reed Society, NAfME, College Music Society, and Pi Kappa Lambda. In 2020, Caulder was the recipient of the IUP Distinguished Faculty Award for Creative Arts and was three times named as a Dean’s Outstanding Researcher for the IUP College of Arts and Humanities.