Faculty and Staff

Director of Choral Activities and Associate Professor

Dr. Richard Schnipke serves as Associate Professor of Music Performance and Director of Choral Activities at Bowling Green State University. His duties at BGSU include conducting the Collegiate Chorale and Men’s Chorus, as well as teaching graduate courses in choral repertoire and graduate and undergraduate conducting. Previously, Dr. Schnipke held faculty positions at Xavier University and The Ohio State University and spent 15 years as a public-school choral director. He holds degrees from Bowling Green State University and The Ohio State University and has done additional graduate studies at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music.

Choirs under Schnipke’s direction have performed at national and regional conferences of the American Choral Directors Association and have made numerous appearances at the Ohio Music Education Association Professional Development Conference and the Ohio Choral Directors Association Summer Conference. Schnipke’s choirs have also sung for the American Musicological Society and for several national seminars of the IMC: The Tenor-Bass Choral Consoritum. Dr. Schnipke also regularly prepares professional choruses for the Toledo Symphony Orchestra and frequently presents at state, regional, and national conference on the incorporation of Dalcroze Eurhythmics in the choral rehearsal.

Schnipke performs regularly as a professional chorister and has served as tenor section leader for Cincinnati’s Vocal Arts Ensemble (Grammy Award winner, Craig Hella Johnson, music director). He is a Past-President of the Ohio Choral Directors Association, has served on the National Board of the National Collegiate Choral Organization, and is currently on the board of IMC: The Tenor-Bass Choral Consortium.

William Skoog served as Professor of Music at Rhodes College in Memphis, Tennessee from 2009 to 2025, retiring from Rhodes this year. He served as Chair of the Department of Music from 2009 to 2018, subsequently serving as the Director of Choral Studies until 2024.

Prior to serving at Rhodes, he held positions as Director of Choral Activities at Southwestern Michigan College, Indiana/Purdue University at Fort Wayne, and at Bowling Green State University. Skoog has several publications, most significantly a monograph on the Choral Music of Jennifer Higdon published by Cambridge Scholars Press, and is under contract by the same publisher for a monograph on The Choral Music of Dave Brubeck.

Skoog currently serves as Interim Choir Director at Germantown Presbyterian Church, and as conductor for a choir at Trezevant Manor, in Memphis. At Rhodes he conducted the Rhodes Singers, Chamber Singers, and the Rhodes MasterSingers Chorale, conducting major choral-orchestral works with that 100-voice, semi-professional ensemble, performing with the Memphis Symphony Orchestra. He has conducted orchestras and choirs in international festivals in Prague, Vienna, Salzburg, Dublin, Rome, Venice, London, Paris and Lucerne, and national festivals at the Kennedy Center and at Carnegie Hall. He holds a Doctor of Arts degree in Music with emphases in conducting and in voice/opera from the University of Northern Colorado, two Master of Arts degrees, one in Voice and one in Conducting from the Lamont School of Music at Denver University (CO), and a Bachelor of Arts degree in Music and Theatre from Gustavus Adolphus College, St. Peter Minnesota. Bill is the father of three grown children and has six grandchildren. He resides in Shelby County, Tennessee with his wife Elaine and their two dogs, Nutella and Brisket. 

Kevin McGill taught himself to play the piano at the age of 12, and by the age of 14 was playing the organ for church services in his hometown of Richmond, Indiana. He attended the University of Evansville and earned a Bachelor of Music degree in piano performance. He received a Master of Music degree in piano performance and pedagogy from Bowling Green State University where he had assistantships in Opera accompanying and voice studio accompanying. His piano teachers include Laura Melton, Virginia Marks, Anne Hastings-Fiedler, and Cecilia Cho. After graduating, Kevin taught at Bowling Green State University and Bluffton University.

As an organist, Kevin was Director of Music Ministry at St. Mark’s Lutheran Church in Bowling Green, OH for 20 years. He has also toured Europe with various choirs. His organ teachers include Vernon Wolcott, Douglas Reed and Dwight Thomas.

Mr. McGill is currently Adjunct Assistant Professor of piano and choral accompanist at BGSU, pianist for The Toledo Masterworks Chorale, and organist at St. Mark’s Lutheran Church (Bowling Green). He is also active as a freelance collaborative pianist.