POUGHKEEPSIE, NY (June 16, 2014) -- Former Vassar College cross country standout Will Healy '12 was honored recently with the WK Rose Fellowship. Healy completed his degree in music with a correlate in environmental land-use geography at Vassar, and impressed the selection committee with his musical resume.

While a member of the Vassar cross country team, Healy was routinely in the front of the pack for the Brewer harriers. As a senior, Healy never finished outside of the top four for VC in any race, and also was the leading runner for the Brewers at the Paul Short Meet at Lehigh University and the NCAA Atlantic Regional. A four-year letter for Vassar, he posted a career-best time of 26:12 during his senior season in an 8k race at Connecticut College. Healy is a testament that Division III student-athletes can excel in academics, extra-curriculars and athletics during their college experiences.

Below are the comments from the WK Rose committee:

"Will was one of the Music Department's most brilliant students: an exceptional pianist, who twice won the department concerto competition; an unusually mature and original composer, who twice won the department composition prize; and a most versatile musician, who plays trumpet and piano equally well in both classical and jazz idioms. His idea for a Rose Fellowship project -- to explore both the real spaces and attendant metaphors of abandoned cities through musical media -- was already beautifully presaged by his chamber work Hashima, an investigation of just such a place, for which he won Vassar's Jean Slater Edson Prize in 2010."

Both William Healey's music and his recent career trajectory are nothing short of remarkable. He shows tremendous promise as both a composer and a music director. His compositions exhibit both technical skill and lyricism, they are meticulously constructed, daringly orchestrated, and beautifully phrased. He chooses interesting, contemporary topics that represent a young person's view of modern life - science, catastrophe and discovery. His interpersonal ability to assemble musicians to perform his and other composers' new compositions also reflects well on his ability to have a high-level career in the competitive field of composition."