Michael Harnichar, a theater student at Columbia College Chicago, recently won first place in the Musical Theater Competition sponsored by the Greater Chicago Chapter of the National Society of Arts and Letters (NSAL). Having received accolades, and a $500 prize, at the local level Michael will go on to compete for a $10,000 prize May 20-22 when he struts his stuff at the Society’s National Career Awards on the University of Illinois, Champaign Urbana Campus.
As a student at Cleveland Heights High School in Ohio, Harnichar enjoyed his studies in history and psychology and competing for the school on the hockey, baseball and swim teams. Summers, he pursued his interest in musical theater by participating in Cleveland’s Summer Stock Theater. By the time Michael graduated from CHHS in 2002, he had quite a resume, including the roles of Judas in Jesus Christ Superstar, the Plant in Little Shop of Horrors and Doody in Grease.
Focused on a career in musical theater, he applied to—and was accepted and offered scholarship money at—Emerson College and Baldwin-Wallace. He chose to come to Columbia, however, because he felt the experience would be richer in significant ways.
‘I went to a very diverse high school, and I was honestly scared of going to a college that would be all white or all one class of people,’ Michael explains. ‘Columbia has the diversity I knew and need, even if it didn’t have the scholarship money to give me. They are giving me a priceless education in that, in addition to working with outstanding teachers, I am learning more about who I am and how I fit in with the diversity around me.’