Eastern Oregon University chamber choir brings music, recruiting to Unity school

A 44-voice Eastern Oregon University chamber choir filled Burnt River School in Unity on Monday, giving a rural K-12 campus with 55 students a rare visit from one of the region’s public universities and a direct recruiting push at the same time.

The stop mattered because of scale. Unity had 40 residents at the 2020 census, Baker County had 16,668, and Burnt River School sits in a rural remote locale, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. For a school that small, a touring university ensemble nearly matched the student body in size, turning an ordinary weekday into a regionwide cultural event.

Professor Peter Wordelman brought the singers through Baker County as part of a trip that also included Baker City and Meridian, Idaho. Wordelman said he never knows which student may someday choose Eastern Oregon University, which is why visits like the one to Burnt River are both performance and recruitment. In a county where many communities are separated by long distances and limited access to outside programming, the university brought the experience directly to the students instead of waiting for them to travel for it.

Burnt River School’s enrollment underscores how unusual that access can be. NCES lists 55 students, 6.07 classroom teachers and a student-teacher ratio of 9.06 for the 2024-25 school year. The school also had 39 students eligible for free lunch, a sign that many families in the district live with limited financial resources. Local reporting in 2023 described Burnt River as projecting about 35 students for the school year, including about 20 in high school, which shows just how small the district remains.

That is part of why a campus visit from Eastern Oregon University carries more weight than a single concert. Burnt River School District 30J is the smallest district in Baker County, and opportunities that are routine in larger towns often arrive only when an outside group makes the trip. Superintendent Cassie Moore called the visit fitting, reflecting the sense that the event was not just entertainment but a genuine educational exchange.

The choir’s presence also tied into the university’s broader music program. Eastern Oregon University’s Music Department says its Bachelor of Music can prepare students for careers in music therapy, ethnomusicology, music and audio production, performance, composition and music education. The chamber choir is also part of the university’s annual song-and-dance production, You, Me & We: Music That Brings US Together, making the ensemble a visible calling card for a program that is trying to reach rural students before they leave high school.

For a tiny school in Unity, the visit showed how a single afternoon of music can also be a recruiting event, a cultural link and a reminder that Baker County’s smallest places still matter to major regional institutions.