Spirit of Adventure Award

Ted Coons ’51 is the recipient of the 2022 Spirit of Adventure Award. Ted started college at the University of Oklahoma majoring in music, then transferred to CC after attending a summer session in 1948. At CC he worked with music professor David Kraehenbuehl, studying the effects of music on listener’s feelings. The two eventually co-authored pioneering articles on the subject. After CC, Ted served in the Air Force, then followed Kraehenbuehl to Yale, enrolling as a graduate student and switching his focus to psychology.

After earning a Ph.D. in neuroscience, Ted began a long and highly productive tenure at New York University, where he has taken his initial interest in the effects of musical form on listeners’ feelings “down to the neural level where cells are presented with electrical impulses in various patterns to study the effects these engender in the sense of reward, hunger, anxiety, and pain…” Ted’s 2019 gift to CC established the Edgar E. Coons Jr. '51 Director of Academic Engagement in the Arts Fund. The fund supports events at the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center at Colorado College, fellowships, workshops for faculty, activities of the UnBlocked Gallery, student exhibitions, music and dance performances, public art projects, and conferences.