Rachel Lyons wins Long Island Scholar Artist award

Baldwin High School senior Rachel Lyons was recognized as one of the ten Long Island’s scholar artists.

Baldwin High School senior, Rachel Lyons, has been recognized as a Long Island High School Scholar Artist for the 2022-2023 school year by the Long Island Arts Alliance. 

The Long Island Arts Alliance — a non profit arts and culture organization focused on promoting awareness and participation in Long Island’s artistic institutions — developed the Scholar-Artist awards program to recognize student achievement in the arts and academics and present exceptionally accomplished high school seniors to the public in monthly profiles published in Newsday.

A total of 40 Scholar–Artists were chosen from a pool of students from across Long Island in five disciplines: Visual Arts, Music, Theater, Dance, and Media Arts. The school district said Lyons was one of ten to be honored in the discipline of music and will be featured in Newsday for the month of June, highlighting both her academic and artistic successes. 

“Rachel has been a very productive student throughout her time in Baldwin Schools,” said Andre Poprilo, Baldwin Union Free School District’s director of fine and performing arts. “A pianist, cellist, vocalist, scholar, leader and an amazing person; she adds to whatever organization to which she is a member. On behalf of the music department, we congratulate her on a well-deserved recognition, as she embodies the essence of the Long Island Scholar Artist program.” 

The school district said students are first nominated by Long Island’s public, independent and parochial schools. From these nominees, the Scholar-Artist selection committees choose one monthly award winner from Nassau and one from Suffolk for ten consecutive months throughout the school year.

To earn an award in the Scholar-Artist program, students must demonstrate the highest level of artistic excellence, as well as superior academic achievement, a grade point average of 90 or above. Over the summer, the committee, which is composed of art educators, uses review process to judge the submitted works. 

The school district said Lyons has always been an exceptional student of academia and music and is currently set to be the Class of 2023 valedictorian. Her music career began at the young age of four, when she started taking piano lessons.

She then picked up the cello while at Meadow Elementary School at just nine years old. She most recently was designated a NYSSMA All-State musician, she’s a National Merit Scholarship Program Commended Student, and is Baldwin High School’s Tri-M Music Honor Society president. 

Lyons will appear in the June issue of Newsday’s monthly public profiles.