Arts Administration Faculty

Affiliated Faculty

Penny Peavler, Instructor

Penny Peavler holds a bachelor of arts degree in Creative Writing with minors in Appalachian Studies and Business from the University of Kentucky, and a Master of Arts in Liberal Studies from Bellarmine. 

Penny is a veteran arts administrator with 30+years in all aspects of the field. Trained at Disney University in theme park management, she came to Louisville in 1990 to help open Kentucky Kingdom Amusement Park. There she served as personnel director, hiring and training the park's 1200 seasonal employees, and also as director of special projects. Afterwards, she joined the staff of Louisville’s Speed Art Museum as Director of Membership, Marketing, and Special Projects and served for 13 years growing participation and attendance by more than 50%. She led teams for the Leadership and Excellence in Arts Participation grant of the Wallace Foundation studying, over four years, the patterns of museum attendance among participants and disinclined participants with children ages 2 to 12. 

In 2007, she joined Weber Group, as Director of Brand Development, and worked with museums, zoos, amusement parks, theatres, hotels, and attractions of all types in brand development and project management of new and renovated attractions. Favorite projects include the Mister Rogers Neighborhood Attraction at Idlewild Park in Pittsburgh, the ground-up museum at the Outdoor Adventure and Discovery Center in Detroit, Michigan, and educational video scriptwriting and production for Glacier Run at Louisville Zoo. 

In 2015, she was recruited as Chief Executive Officer of Frazier History Museum. Peavler negotiated the contract with the Kentucky Distillers’ Association to make the Frazier in Louisville into the Official Start of the Kentucky Bourbon Trail. She led design, development, and construction of a new entrance, native plants garden, and an exhibit on the history of bourbon, America’s Native Spirit, and its impact on the Commonwealth. She delivered the $9 million project on-time and on-budget. Under her leadership, the Frazier became the place where the world meets Kentucky, and she brought temporary and permanent exhibits to life about Kentucky’s culture and her people. Attendance and revenue reached all time highs under her leadership. She joined the Board of Directors in August of 2019 and stepped down as CEO.

Peavler formed Cultural Tourism Consultants, to create and renovate tourism concerns in the region. She is currently project managing feasibility for the transition of an abandoned surface coal mine into a space for arts incubation, nature, land conservation, and education in Eastern Kentucky.

Peavler is featured in the book, Diversity Among Non-Profit Arts Organizations (University of Chicago Press, 2001), and edited the Handbook of the Speed Art Museum Collection (2007), and the Catalog for the Retrospective of the Artist Mary Ann Currier (2005). 

She has produced and art directed more than 30-temporary and permanent museum exhibitions including What Is A Vote Worth: Suffrage Then and Now, Spirits of the Bluegrass: Prohibition and Kentucky, The Spirit of Kentucky, and Thomas Merton: A Familiar Stranger.

She is the 2019 recipient of the Trustees of Inclusive Equity Award given by Louisville Central Community Center.

She is a Commissioner of Louisville Tourism, a member of the Kentucky Humanities Council, and has taught arts administration at Bellarmine since 2010

Trent Apple, J.D., Instructor

Trent Apple has a J.D. from Tulane Law School in New Orleans, and a B.A. in history from New College, the Honors College of Florida. Mr. Apple has taught several law-related courses at Bellarmine University since 2007, including courses on the intersection of art and law in the Arts Administration program, and on business law in the Rubel School of Business. Mr. Apple also teaches history and law at Louisville’s St. Francis School, where he is the Assistant Dean of Students. Prior to teaching full time, Mr. Apple practiced law in Kentucky for a decade.

Dr. S. Timothy Glasscock

Dr. S. Timothy Glasscock, Choral Director and Department Chair for the Bellarmine Music Department, has spent nearly three decades teaching and performing in the Louisville Metro area. He holds the bachelors and masters degrees from U of L and a Doctorate in conducting from University of Kentucky, and spent 12 years as Director of Vocal Studies at Youth Performing Arts School, Kentucky's only full-time high school for the performing arts. Dr. Glasscock is an active clinician and master class presenter, leading European concert tours and conducting major works with orchestra over a wide spectrum of musical literature. He has sung and conducted in 17 countries, and now serves as Artistic Director of The Louisville Vocal Project, a professional chamber choir specializing in renaissance and newly composed choral works. Glasscock's research centers on Johannes Brahms's Ein deutsches Requiem, baroque-era burial music, and the intersection of music, aging, and end-of-life issues.

Dr. Mark Kano

Mark Kano is Assistant Professor of Music and Vocal Area Coordinator at Bellarmine University. Kano received a Bachelor of Music degree in Vocal Performance from Middle Tennessee State University and both the Master of Music and Doctor of Musical Arts degrees in Vocal Performance from the University of Kentucky. Mark has performed with orchestra and opera companies in the United States and Europe. He has been a winner in the Mid-South Regional National Association of Teacher’s of Singing Competition, as well as the Orpheus National Voice Competition. A dedicated voice teacher, Dr. Kano’s students have been winners in various vocal competitions, participated in summer music festivals, and have gone on to pursue music studies at such prestigious institutions as the University of Michigan, Indiana University, Cincinnati College Conservatory of Music, and The Julliard School. Dr. Kano has served as Visiting Professor of Voice at the University of Kentucky and on the voice faculties of Centre College, Transylvania University, Kentucky Center Governor’s School for the Arts, and the Operafestival di Roma.

Dr. Alexander T. Simpson Jr.

Alexander T. Simpson Jr., Associate Professor, directs the Bellarmine Handbell ensemble, teaches Music Literature and teaches courses in the IDC and Veritas Programs. Dr. Simpson received his undergraduate degree from Dartmouth College, his M.M. from Converse College, and his Ph.D. from the University of Kentucky. Simpson has accompanied for the Kentucky Opera, the Charleston Opera Company, the Spartanburg Opera, the Converse College Opera Workshop, and the University of Louisville Opera Theatre.

Dr. Simpson has taught on the Music Faculty of the Kentucky Governor’s School for the Arts for 26 years, serving as Choral Director and Vocal Division Chairperson. He is the founder and Artistic Director of the Black Classical Artists of Louisville, an ensemble specializing in compositions by African-American composers. This group has performed throughout the Kentuckiana region as well as at the Piccolo Spoleto Festival in Charleston South Carolina, boasting members who have who have performed with the Louisville Orchestra, the Cincinnati Orchestra, the Indianapolis Symphony, the San Francisco Opera, the Lyric Opera of Chicago and the Metropolitan Opera.

Both a founding member and president of the Kentuckiana Branch of the National Association of Negro Musicians, Dr. Simpson serves as advisor for the Bellarmine Black Student Union (BSU) and coordinates the annual ‘Traditional Negro Spiritual’ Voice Competition as well as many other Black History Month commemorations.

Meme Tunnell

Meme Tunnell is Assistant Professor of Music at Bellarmine University in Louisville, Kentucky, where she teaches piano and serves as Staff Accompanist and Director of the Preparatory Music Division. She has performed as adjunct keyboardist with the Louisville Orchestra since 1988, and formerly was principal keyboardist for the Meridian Symphony, Gulf Coast Symphony, and Champaign-Urbana Symphony Orchestras, and the Sinfonia da Camera of Illinois. Tunnell’s recording credits include the Coronet label CDs Melancholia and Lumen, and the Centaur Records Passages, The Morning Trumpet, and Nevolution with trumpeter Michael Tunnell; Mixed Doubles with Michael Tunnell and tubist Fritz Kaenzig, on the Coronet label; Chamber Music, featuring saxophonist Joseph Lulloff, on the Veriatza label; and the 2009 TNT Productions CD Look Within with trumpeter Patrick Henry Hughes. She is a former member of the piano faculties at the University of Southern Mississippi and S.U.N.Y.-Potsdam College.

Caren Cunningham

Caren Cunningham is the Director of Bellarmine’s Arts Administration program. She is an international artist and educator. She has held 30 solo exhibitions on five continents, including shows in Lima, Peru; Helsinki Finland; Nairobi, Kenya; and Fuzhou China. She has participated in over 60 group exhibitions worldwide. Articles have been written about her work in English, German, Finnish, Hebrew, Mandarin, Spanish and Swahili. She has over 30 years of university teaching experience in Egypt, Kenya, Scotland, China, and the U.S.A.

Laura Hartford

Laura Hartford teaches photography and digital art and serves as an Associate Dean of the Bellarmine College of Arts and Sciences. She has a background in both fine art and commercial media production, including credits as an Associate Producer of video programs for Donna Lawrence Productions. She holds an M.F.A. from Indiana University, Bloomington and is the recipient of grants for art and teaching from the Kentucky Foundation for Women, the Society for Photographic Education, and the Kentucky Center for the Arts. Her work is included in both private and institutional collections including the University of Louisville Photographic Archives, the Kinsey Institute, the Preus Museum of Photography in Horten Norway, and the William Henry Fox Talbot Museum in Lacock, England where she served as an artist in residence.