We would like to wish our faculty and staff in the School for Classical & Contemporary Dance, Department of Design and School of Music the best of luck in their new adventures! They are saying farewell after years of achievements in teaching, creative activities and unwavering service to the College of Fine Arts and TCU.
School for Classical & Contemporary Dance
Susan Austin
Costume Shop Supervisor
Austin will retire at the end of August 2023 after 10 years with the SCCDance. Some of her proudest moments include crafting unique costumes and preparing students for their annual DanceTCU concerts. During her TCU career, she enjoyed bringing joy to each dancer and participating in wonderful collaborations with the community. In addition to her teaching and creative activities, Austin spent over 20 years teaching ballet classes and choreographing musicals and ballet recitals in Fort Worth.
Roma Flowers
Associate Professor of Professional Practice
Flowers will retire in September 2023 after 18 years in the SCCDance. Bringing a wealth of industry knowledge from her 20-year professional design career in New York City, Flowers taught dance production and dance lighting and introduced a screendance course to the SCCDance curriculum. She received the prestigious Notch “Knight of Illumination” award for “A Bon Coeur,” an evening-length dance work that saw early development in Studio B of Erma Lowe Hall. Flowers plans to continue her artistic journey through professional lighting, projection design and dance filmmaking.
John Hopkins
Staff Musician
Hopkins will retire at the end of August 2023 after 20 years in the SCCDance. Among his proudest moments were directing and performing music with his Zimbabwe-style band, Munesu Marimbas, to accompany an SCCDance performance of “Ritual on Fire Mountain,” choreographed by Stafford Berry. His retirement plans include playing for Ballet Lubbock and bringing baroque, jazz and Zimbabwean music to audiences in Lubbock, Texas. He also looks forward to having time to work on musical content creation, mathematics and learning new languages.
Department of Design
Bill Galyean
Design Lecturer
Galyean will start a new adventure in September 2023 after 17 years in the Department of Design. His teaching career spans more than 20 years at TCU and Southern Methodist University, following a 30-year career in the advertising industry. Galyean taught foundation and upper division classes, including package, publication and advertising design along with a class that was by invitation only. He says he will greatly miss the wonderful culture, faculty and magic found in the TCU classrooms.
H. Joseph Butler
Professor of Music & University Organist
Butler retired in May 2023 after 27 years with the School of Music. Among his contributions to TCU, Butler served as the associate dean of the College of Fine Arts for 20 years and won the Chancellor’s Award for Distinguished Achievement as a Creative Teacher and Scholar in 2017. His students have distinguished themselves in performance competitions, full-time music positions and admission to prestigious graduate programs throughout the country. In addition to his teaching activities, he has published articles in scholarly journals and has performed in Canada, China, Hong Kong and the United Kingdom.
Joseph Eckert
Professor of Saxophone & Director of Jazz Studies
Eckert will retire in September 2023 after 16 years with the School of Music. His teaching career spans more than 40 years at institutions including TCU, Shenandoah Conservatory and West Virginia University. Among his many contributions to TCU, Eckert helped build the saxophone studio and invited musical icons to the TCU Jazz Festival as director of jazz studies. During his career, he performed as the lead alto saxophonist and later music director for the U.S. Air Force Band’s Airmen of Note. Eckert’s retirement plans include relocating to Florida with his wife to spend more time with family and continue his career as a freelance musician and education consultant.
John Owings
Herndon Professor of Music & Division Chair of Piano
Owings will retire in August 2023 after 33 years with the School of Music. He received the Chancellor’s Award for Distinguished Creative Activity in 1993 for his performances of the 32 Beethoven piano sonatas. Throughout his career, he performed in many prestigious concert halls worldwide, including Carnegie Hall with the TCU ensemble Trio Con Brio and the magnificent Van Cliburn Concert Hall at TCU during its opening last year. His final two performances at TCU took place there this year and included an all-Beethoven chamber music recital and a solo recital. One of his proudest moments was seeing his son Sam Hong graduate summa cum laude from TCU’s School of Music with a bachelor’s degree in piano performance at the age of 16.