Oakwood Wins Big at the 2012 World Choir Games

Oakwood University’s Aeolians Choir won the gold medal in all three of its categories in the 2012 World Choir Games. Yesterday they placed first in the Religions of the World category, and today they took home the gold in the Spirituals and Contemporary Music categories.

The World Choir Games takes place every two years. The event this year in Cincinnati, Ohio, is expected to draw 20,000 participants, including 400 choirs from 70 countries. There will be competition in 23 musical categories, including Barbershop and Show Choirs, which have been added for the first time because of their popularity in the United States.

The Aeolians are the official choir of the University, founded in 1946 by professor Dr. Eva B. Dykes, the first black American woman to fulfill the requirements for a doctoral degree, and the third to be awarded a PhD. Oakwood University’s Aeolians Choir is no stranger to success. Here is a performance at the November 4, 2011 iSing College Choir Scholarship Challenge, at the Reid Temple AME Church, Glenn Dale, MD, where they were awarded top honors for the second year in a row. 

These most recent honors sit among a long list of Oakwood’s successes and accomplishments. Recently the university issued the following press release, originally published on BlackNews.com

1. Newly-inaugurated 11th president, Dr. Leslie N. Pollard, is OU’s first leader with both ministerial and academic doctorates – and an MBA; therefore and as a result
2. OU is the first and only HBCU and Alabama school that’s ISO-certified; and
3. Alumni and friends now raising more monies;
4. Through establishing its new Center for Adventist-Muslim Relations at OU (CAMROU), OU’s reaching out now to the world’s 1 billion Muslims, as well as through its Consortium of Adventist African Universities and Partners (CAAUP), bringing together for the first time all Seventh-day Adventist colleges and universities from the African Diaspora;
5. Served as the Tom Joyner Foundation’s November 2011, “HBCU of the Month”;
6. Creating more HBCU grads, and, according to UNCF CEO Michael Lomax, Oakwood possesses the highest black male enrollment (41%) of all UNCF schools;
7. Oakwood University, “the Julliard of the South,” has produced not only a repeating national choral champion, but this small school has produced many of the professional musical artists the world has come to enjoy;
8. In fact and with the Aeolians Choir (choral), this year Oakwood University is the home of three national champions: men’s basketball (athletic),  and the Honda Campus All-Star Challenge runners-up (academic) – all with no music/choral, athletic or academic scholarships;
9. OU received a whopping 98.9% preliminary report from its decennial Southern Association of Colleges and Schools reaccreditation visit;  and finally
10. Oakwood’s LEAP adult degree completion program offers dirt-cheap private-school tuition ($269/credit hour) as well as extends to former “Oakwoodites” tuition amnesty, following the Holy Bible’s Deuteronomy 15:1 – what no financial institution or credit card will ever do!