Nine months of search for a chair of the music department ended with the appointment of Harold Kafer.

Kafer took over the office July 1. Until recently, he was the head of the music department at Auburn University in Auburn, Ala., where he also conducted the Auburn University Symphony and Chamber Orchestras.

Kafer spent eleven years at the community college level. In his last assignment at Auburn, Kafer spent seven years where he successfully combined his administrative and teaching duties with creative work in music.

The main challenge at NIU is its size, scope and diversity, Kafer said. But he said he considers his present duties similar to what he had been doing at Auburn.

Kafer said his immediate goals at NIU are to “make considered efforts to find new sources of external funding to support the school,” and to make it more visible at the international level.

Kafer said he believes that music is a historic unbroken subject-matter base which can be traced to the dawn of man and those persons who are predisposed to think in that subject-matter base exhibit the same critical thought in science and math. Therefore, music and in a broader sense, arts is the center of human experience.

All educators have a responsibility to teach students how to think not only in their subjects but also in abstract ways so that the critical skills thus developed can be easily transformed to other subjects as well, he said.

An accomplished pianist, Kafer holds a bachelor’s in music from Peabody Conservatory, a master’s from Arizona State University, and a Ph.D. from the University of North Texas. He also studied piano with Donald Isaak, Reginald Stewart, Julio Esteban, Arnold Bullock and Stefan Bardas.

Kafer is a member of the Lyric Ensemble, a chamber ensemble comprised of soprano, oboe, horn and piano, now in its fourth season. An active composer, he has written for piano, chorus, various instrumental combinations, and has two original works in the repertoire of the Lyric Ensemble.