Music professor André García-Nuthmann was named as New Mexico Highlands University’s professor of the year. “My students are my life,” García-Nuthmann said. “I had a handful of influential teachers who made all the difference in my life, and I feel that now is the time to make that difference in someone else’s life. It is a great responsibility to guide someone in the right direction.”García-Nuthmann, who has been teaching at Highlands since 1990, has conducted the Music Department’s three choirs while also teaching music theory classes and voice. He has fostered a 10-year relationship between the department and the Santa Fe Symphony, which has performed with the Highlands Concert Choir and the Madrigal Choir in many collaborative projects. “I started with one small choir and now I have three, and each performs its own concert every semester,” García-Nuthmann said. “I can’t really imagine my life any other way. It is a blessing to have a job in which I can do what I truly love all day long.”Several of García-Nuthmann’s advanced students have appeared with the symphony as well, and he has arranged further training for them with other voice coaches, such as retired Metropolitan Opera singer Regina Rickless of Santa Fe. His Madrigal Choir has traveled to Taos and to Durango, Colo. for concerts and performed last year at the annual Choral Festival in Austria.