Mikylah Myers
Dr. Mikylah Myers is the Associate Dean of Research and Creative Activity in the College of Creative Arts and Media at West Virginia University. She works to support, promote, and engage faculty and students in vigorous artistic, scholarly and cultural opportunities at the national and international levels. In the spring of 2020, Dr. Myers created the College’s Creative Consultants and Media Mentors professional mentorship program, which matches outstanding creative arts and media students with WVU’s extraordinary alumni working professionally across all artistic and media disciplines. Most recently, Dr. Myers designed the College's Internship Alliance, which partners the College with prominent arts and media organizations throughout the region to provide paid internship positions for creative arts and media students.
A nationally recognized violinist, Dr. Myers has a particular zest for new music: her recording “REACT: Music for Flute, Violin and Interactive Computer” was released on the PARMA Records label and her performances have been called “energetic and virtuosic” by the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, and “captivating” by Boulder, Colorado’s Daily Camera. She has performed internationally as a soloist, chamber musician, and orchestral player in Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Italy, Germany, Austria, Slovakia, Hungary, and Spain. She was a 19-year member of the Britt Festival Orchestra in Jacksonville, Oregon and also performed as a member of the New World Symphony in Miami Beach, Florida. Dr. Myers also enjoys stepping off the concert stage and into the rock n' roll arena: she has recently performed with the Eagles, Michael Bublé, Warren Haynes, and the Trans-Siberian Orchestra.
Before joining the WVU music faculty as violin professor in 2007, Dr. Myers was concertmaster of the San Juan Symphony and the violin and viola professor at Fort Lewis College in Durango, Colorado. She was also the founder, artistic director, and conductor of the Durango Youth Symphony. Her former violin students hold college and K-12 teaching positions across the nation, and can be heard in chamber music and symphonic performances around the world.
Dr. Myers received doctoral and master’s degrees in violin performance, along with a minor in music journalism, from the University of Houston, where she studied with Fredell Lack, and earned the bachelor of music degree in violin performance from the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, where she studied violin with Roland and Almita Vamos. In addition to her musical studies, Dr. Myers was a writer and editor for the Oberlin Review. She was also a four-year-member and co-captain of the Oberlin College women’s soccer team.