Martin Sweidel is Goucher College’s new senior vice president for strategic initiatives, effective November 3. Sweidel came to Goucher from the Meadows School of the Arts at Southern Methodist University, where he had served as the associate dean for administrative affairs since 2007. He came to SMU in 1986 as a music faculty member, teaching courses in electro-acoustic music, fundamentals of audio and sound, sound and code, and music composition. From 1994 to 2000 he served as chair of the Division of Music and helped strengthen the national reputation of the music program at SMU.
Sweidel holds a doctorate of musical arts in composition from the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music. His music and collaborative computational art projects have been seen and heard in performances, installations, and broadcasts throughout the country, including at the Dallas Video Festival, the Society of Composers Inc., the Society for Electro-Acoustic Music, the Bowling Green New Music and Art Festivals, International Electronic Music-Plus, the Dallas Museum of Art, and TEDxSMU. He has been awarded several Meet the Composer grants, two Individual Artists Fellowships from the Ohio Arts Council, and a Composers Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. Six of his video art collaborations with Donald Pasquella are included in the TV series Frame of Mind. Sweidel’s commercial music includes electronic scores for the film The Last Witness and the documentary Adventures on the Planet Earth.