DMA student Olivia Yokers and UNLV alumna Dr. Bonita Bunt (DMA 2017) won the first place Jury Award in the 2025 National Opera Association Poster Session at the national conference held in Savannah, GA January 5-8, 2025. The poster paper is entitled "Opera Pedagogy from Studio to Stage: Merging the Methods of Michael Chekhov, Rudolf Laban, and Body Mapping to Train the Emerging Singing Actor by Expanding Opera Workshop Curricula." 

Professor Linda Lister says, "They collaborated on the paper with Dr. Laura Pritchard, Associate Director of Opera at the University of Alabama. Olivia and Bonita are my current and former students respectively, and I am thrilled to see them working together. Bonita Bunt had previously also worked in the UNLV Fine Arts Dean's Office and is currently Director of Opera and Assistant Professor of Music at the University of Mississippi."