When I came to UTEP I encounter a decrepit, 30 years old disfunctional piano lab. I immediately started working with a team of colleagues, administrators, and IT professionals to design and acquire a new piano lab. When the first Digital Keyboard Lab (DKL) was installed at UTEP, in 2007, it literally turned heads and it was praised, by group piano experts, as the most advanced piano lab, a model to follow. It included 3 high-definition cameras, live broadcast, monitors for each student, touchscreen controllers, Yamaha Disklavier, SmartBoard, one-way-window observation room and a vast piano pedagogy library. The cost escalated to a $250,000 and was it funded through a grant from the Brown Foundation Inc. The transformation was dramatic as you can see in the pictures below. The DKL was featured in the Roland Education Magazine Spotlight with an extensive interview and video, and in the Oregon Musician "The 21st Century Piano Teacher" by Claire Wachter (see links below).