The University of Wisconsin System Board of Regents recently announced the recipients of its 31st annual Teaching Excellence Awards, which included University of Wisconsin-Superior orchestra director and professor of violin and viola Erin Aldridge. The awards recognize outstanding teaching and are the UW System’s highest recognition for members of its faculty and instructional academic staff. Aldridge becomes the third UW-Superior faculty member to receive this award.

“I am so incredibly honored and overwhelmed with gratitude,” said Aldridge. “I am lucky in that I love my job, especially working with the students and my colleagues. I was incredibly honored to have been selected to represent UW-Superior. To go on to be recognized in this way at the system level is pretty incredible.”

For over 20 years, Aldridge has served as an accomplished educator and scholar in addition to leading a successful professional performing and recording career.

Aldridge approaches her work deeply committed to the role of music in cultivating healthy mindsets in her students, highlighting music’s power to inspire and create a sense of community and belonging. She fosters a wholistic development of each student, an approach reflected in her students’ evaluations, which describe her as approachable, caring and devoted to their success and personal growth.

Teaching applied violin lessons, university orchestra, string chamber music, among many other classes, Aldridge also spends time outside the classroom to build community for UW-Superior music students, including movie nights with film score analysis. She provides undergraduate research opportunities in music, as well as the intersection of music and business, and has made more than 200 visits to area elementary, middle and high school music programs to teach, conduct, perform and present educational music lectures.

“For me, it is all about my students and their accomplishments,” said Aldridge. “That is what makes me excited to go to work every day. Music is a very intensive and challenging field. To see students excelling in a myriad of ways including: a student walk off a stage beaming and seeing how all of their hard practice and work paid off in a performance they are happy with; the ‘lightbulb moments’ in my classes when students are able to connect everything you have been teaching them; student teachers in front of a class of younger students thriving as leaders; an orchestra not just playing music together but supporting and caring for each other as awesome human beings and have fun doing it. These are just a few of the things I am really proud of.”

Aldridge has brought internationally acclaimed artists to give masterclasses at UW-Superior. She has won numerous awards as both soloist and chamber musician and has been featured throughout Europe, South America and the United States.

Other recipients of UW System’s 2023 Teaching Excellence Awards include Jonathan Shailor, professor in the Communication Department at UW-Parkside, and the First Nations Education Doctorate program at UW-Green Bay. Recipients will be honored March 31. Each recipient is awarded $7,500.