Laurence Kaptain has recently served as Vice-Provost for Faculty Programs and Academic Quality at UMKC, prior to that he was the institution's first Assistant Provost. This position was one of 3 major leadership positions in the UMKC Provost's Office. This Vice-Provost ensured the institutional commitment to life-long learning and the recognition that student learning outcomes are integral to every activity of the Office of the Provost. In 2003 he was named a Fellow to the Society for Values in Higher Education. He is also a member of the AAHE/Carnegie Core/Cluster Project CLAASiFY.

Specifically, Dr. Kaptain was in charge of academic hiring, undergraduate programs and curriculum, teaching excellence, and the promotion and tenure process. He was also a Founding Program Director for the University of Missouri New Faculty Teaching Scholars Program. He started numerous successful initiatives at UMKC, including the Day of Learning, a Community Reading, a speakers series called Campus Conversations and a new format for the annual Convocation. He also led the UMKC process for a new 42-hour general education transfer and articulation block.

He has recently been a presenter at the AAHE Roles and Rewards Conference, the Carnegie Doctoral Intensive National Conference, and in 2003 presented at the American Association of Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) National Conference in Seattle, the AAC&U Living and Learning Conference in Phoenix.  Kaptain is also the planner and co-host of the American General and Liberal Studies 2004 National Conference.

Laurence Kaptain has also been featured in Peter Seldin and Mary Lou Higgerson's "The Administrative Portfolio" (Anker, 2001), and was awarded the Thomas Barr Fellowship to attend the Salzburg Seminar in Austria.

As a professional musician Laurence Kaptain is widely heard as a percussionist, marimba, and cimbalom (the Hungarian dulcimer) artist. Most recently he has been featured with the MET Chamber Players and the Ensemble Sospeso in Carnegie Hall, the Chicago Symphony in 4 live concerts and a CD recording for DGG under Pierre Boulez with violinist Gil Shaham. He has also been heard recently at the Canada's DuMaurier Contemporary Music Festival and national broadcast on the CBC, Tanglewood Music Center Contemporary Music Festival, the Aspen Music Festival, Milwaukee Symphony, as well as with the Montreal Symphony in a special video recording for Japan's NHK Television Network. He has also appeared with the San Antonio, Boston, Pittsburgh, Detroit, Syracuse, Rochester, New World, Kansas City and St. Louis Symphonies, the Philadelphia and Minnesota Orchestras, New York Philharmonic, the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, Orpheus, and the Summit Brass. He may be heard on the Teldec, London/Decca, Chandos, Deutsche Grammophon, Mark, Albany, and HWP Record labels.

In the area of contemporary music, he has collaborated and worked directly under the supervision of composers such as Karlheinz Stockhausen (including a European tour and recording for DGG), Leslie Bassett, Bernard Rands, Henri Dutilleux, Karel Husa, Frank Ticheli, James Mobberley, Michael Daugherty, and many others.

Dr. Kaptain is author of "The Wood That Sings:" The Marimba in Chiapas, Mexico, which has been published in Mexico in Spanish translation by the state government of Chiapas, and in English by HoneyRock. As a solo marimba artist, Kaptain has received critical acclaim for his seven concert tours of Latin America. He has served as a judge for four of the Annual State Marimba Competitions in the State of Chiapas, and has also lectured at various conferences throughout Mexico. He is the founder of the Mexican ethnic ensemble, Marimba Yajalón, a group that has received acclaim or their 4 CD recordings as well as tours throughout the Americas and Europe. In December of 1999 he was a featured performer, adjudicator, and lecturer at the First International Festival of the Marimbist in Chiapas, Mexico.

A former Fulbright Scholar to Mexico, he was awarded the first Doctor of Musical Arts degree in percussion instruments from the University of Michigan where he studied with Michael Udow and Charles Owen. His bachelors and masters degrees are from Ball State University and the University of Miami where he studied with Dr. Erwin Mueller and Fred Wickstrom. He also studied with the late James Lane, Duane Thamm, G. Allan O'Connor, and George McNabney. Dr. Kaptain is presently Professor of Music at the Conservatory of Music of the University of Missouri-Kansas City, a National Performing Artist for YAMAHA Corporation of America, as well as a clinician for the Avedis Zildjian Co. He was awarded the UMKC Conservatory of Music Muriel Kauffman Excellence in Teaching Award, named Outstanding Alumnus of the Ball State University School of Music, and the University of Missouri-Kansas City Trustees named him a Faculty Fellow.