Steven Paxton (’77 M.M.), Santa Fe, N.M. :: is retiring after a 44-year career as a high school choral director, college music professor and administrator. He began his teaching career in Borger and went on to teach at West Texas State University (now West Texas A&M) and Texas Tech University. For the past 14 years, he has served as chair of the contemporary music program at the College of Santa Fe and as professor of theory and composition at Santa Fe University of Art and Design, where he also directed choral and new music ensembles. During a one-year hiatus from the Santa Fe colleges, he returned to high school choral music as director of choirs at Moriarty (N.M.) High School. He and his wife Joy Ferrell Paxton (’73) reside in Santa Fe, with frequent trips to visit children and grandchildren in Austin. Steve  continues to be involved in arts education by playing piano for National Dance Institute classes at elementary schools in Santa Fe, Española and Ohkey Owingeh Pueblo. His newly launched publishing company, Creative Spirit, currently has a catalog of nearly 100 new works and transcriptions for musicians at all levels, with an emphasis on school band and orchestral transcriptions of works by Erik Satie, Louis Moreau Gottschalk and Charles Ives.