Elizabeth VanOrden, newly appointed adjunct voice faculty at University of Texas at Tyler, holds a bachelor's degree in voice performance from Union University, and a master's degree in voice performance from Baylor University. For the past six years, she taught high school choir in association with Fort Worth, Athens, and Tyler Independent School Districts, earning distinctions at UIL Concert and
Sight Reading Contest, TMEA All State Choirs, and Regional and State Solo & Ensemble Contests. Previously, she taught private voice lessons for ten years through Arlington Music Enrichment Program, in association with Lamar High School and Nichols Junior High choirs, as well as Plano public schools. VanOrden has taught over four hundred individual students, developing voices for such varying goals as TMEA All State Choir, UIL Solo & Ensemble Contest, sight singing competitions, AP music theory, college voice auditions, musical theater performance, community music performance, and church choir participation. VanOrden has performed with several regional companies in the East Texas and Dallas-Fort Worth areas, including StageNotes Academy of Performing Arts, OhLook! Theater, Uptown Players, Turtle Creek Chorale, Repertory Company Theater, Mainstage Irving/Las Colinas, Frisco Community Theatre, Rover Dramawerks, and Dallas Symphony Chorus. She teaches with the goal of making students independent musicians with the skills at hand to pursue any desired outcome, whether it's maximizing vocal ability, staying cool under pressure, clear communication, presentation skills, self confidence, calculated risk-taking, coping with failure and success healthfully, or simple appreciation of the most ubiquitous art form out there: song. She lives with her husband Tim and cats Merry, Penelope, and Lucy in Athens, where she enjoys coffee, Stardew Valley and other video games, and pretending to garden and craft!
