Through years of balancing his job as an airline pilot with community work, Strickland developed the Manchester Craftsmen's Guild, an alternative learning center in Pittsburgh that provides arts education for inner-city youth and young adults. In an area where fewer than half of all high school students go on to college, 80 percent of the Guild's students do so.

An appointee to the National Council on the Arts, he is the author of "Across the Spectrum," a primer for developing arts education.

Strickland, a graduate of the University of Pittsburgh, was named a MacArthur Fellow by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation in 1996.