Members of the Brevard College community know Dr. Mel Bringle as the recipient of the 2025 Jerry G. Gaff Faculty Award for Outstanding Teacher from the Association for General and Liberal Studies. Recently, however, another dimension of her professional work reached an international audience.
During the holiday season, one of Dr. Bringle’s hymns was featured on BBC Radio 4 in a broadcast from the chapel at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. The moment highlighted a longstanding vocation that extends well beyond the classroom.
In addition to her work as a professor, Dr. Bringle is a prolific hymn writer and translator. She has authored more than 200 original hymn texts and completed over 100 translations that appear in denominational hymnals across the United States and internationally. Her words have been sung in churches, universities, and sacred spaces around the world—often by individuals who may not know the author behind the text.
What began with a hymn written as a wedding gift for a former student has developed into decades of work at the intersection of faith, language, music, and scholarship. The recent BBC broadcast offered a reminder of the wide reach of her creative and academic contributions, connecting Brevard College to listeners across the globe.