Duane Bierman, the director of bands for the past 16 years, is now spending his last months working at UNK. After this semester, he is planning to transfer and become the band director at Wartburg College in Waverly Iowa.
“This is more than a job for me,” Bierman said. “This is a big part of my identity, what I do here, and it has become a very important thing. I care a lot about what’s happening here with the program and all the students that have been through it over the last decade and a half.”
Bierman is returning to his alma mater, having received his bachelor’s degree from Wartburg. He said he has a certain level of loyalty and love for the institution because the band program was formative for him.
Wartburg’s band program has had three directors in the last four years and has seen a large drop in attendance at the same time. Bierman estimated that they went from a group of around 160 to 50 and said that it didn’t sit well with him.
“For some reason, when you have short-serving band directors, students will look at that and say, ‘That’s not really a serious program because that person’s not there long term,’” Bierman said. “And it doesn’t make sense. It shouldn’t matter.”
Bierman said that he plans to stay at Wartburg and give them a consistent director until he retires.
While he initially consulted with Brian Alber, the assistant director of bands at UNK and a close friend of Bierman, the first group of people that was informed of the change was the band.
Bierman said that the plan was to get as many band students in a room as possible so that they could all hear about it from him, and that he thought about the drumline that he works closely with.
“I feel like what I wanted was for the students to understand, especially the ones that cared a lot and could get upset,” Bierman said. “I wanted them to understand why, and I feel like that got across. That was tough, though.”
Bierman immediately received many emails and had several students in his office to talk after the announcement, then more in the following weeks. He also checked in with his percussion students when they had their next lesson.
Bierman said that because of the supportive and close-knit nature of Nebraska band directors, he has gotten a lot of support from outside of the school.
“Yeah, people are nice in Nebraska, but there’s a deeper level of commitment,” Bierman said.“…I’m just kind of overwhelmed by the response. People have been really coming out of the way, and they don’t have to do any of this stuff. Nobody owes me anything, but they’ve been taking time to thank me for the time I spent here.”
UNK started the hiring process for someone to fill Bierman’s position on March 31 with a nationwide search over several different platforms.
The hiring process is going to have many different layers of screening. Some include several interviews, both on zoom and in person, coming to UNK to conduct the bands and teaching some of the music ed classes. The hiring staff wants to see how the interviewees do and make sure that they can work well with students.
“Dr. Bierman’s a diamond, and so I don’t think it would be fair to try to find someone exactly like him,” Alber said. “But (we need) somebody who has the same strengths in those particular areas, but has a genuine interest in our students, our program and also is a good colleague to work with.”
Alber said that he credits Bierman for putting the band program into a good place and that it’s now the task of the remaining members to build on that success.
Bierman said that he doesn’t think that traditions should be kept just for the sake of keeping traditions. He does want the new person coming in to be able to learn from the current students, and he is leaning on those students to be able to teach them.
“I want to set up as much success as possible for whatever happens next,” Bierman said. “I just keep thinking back to my first year on this drum line, because I walked into a drum line that had a culture of success and a culture of, like, we’re a thing. I hope the next person quickly grasps that there are traditions in place.”
