Utilizing Collegiate Faculty

Collegiate faculty can benefit students, programs, and music educators in many ways. The most obvious and presumably most common strategy is to invite local collegiate faculty to clinic with an ensemble, pre-concert or pre-adjudicated event. Many faculty will happily work with students. It will give the students and the music educator different thoughts on the music, or, as is often the case, the clinician will say the exact same thing you have been saying to the students, but this time it will stick because someone else is saying it.

If a district is far from a college campus, work with the ensemble director from a neighboring district so that the collegiate faculty work at one district in the morning and one district in the afternoon, to make it more worthwhile to drive farther distances. Additionally, you could bring your students to their campus. A district might be more likely to financially support a field trip for music students to work with collegiate faculty if there is a campus tour involved, or students can talk to current music students on their experiences majoring in music. Ensemble directors frequently partner with ensembles in performance contexts, either for joint performances of larger works in which the ensembles complement each other or sharing a concert program with a few combined pieces.

Similarly, by chairing an honor choir, you can influence who the conductor of the ensemble will be and can learn from their rehearsals, as well as ask questions at the mealtimes. I have become lifelong friends and colleagues with numerous collegiate faculty I met this way, and still field questions from educators from honor choirs I have conducted.

There are ways to engage with collegiate faculty beyond ensembles as well. Email and ask ensemble directors about what rep they like for your ensemble voicing and skill level. Many collegiate faculty are up on the current literature for secondary ensembles and can have great recommendations. Or they could recommend someone else with great programming choices for you to ask. Curriculum and assessment thoughts could be directed to specific music education faculty that teach these classes. Younger choirs can benefit from elementary general professors. This content specificity could be better than searching sheet music sites or asking questions on social media. Have a local applied lessons faculty play with your ensemble.

There are several reasons that I often hear from music educators why they can’t or don’t partner with collegiate faculty. The cost frequently comes up. However, with many collegiate faculty, recruitment activities are a part of their tenure and promotion guidelines, so if faculty get a few minutes to talk about the musical opportunities that exist at their institution, that is enough to be reimbursed mileage or add a line to their CV. An honorarium can be appreciated, but many faculty see it as a service to the profession. Secondly, like much of music, it can be vulnerable to open yourself up to what through one lens could be construed as criticism. Third, some music educators have expressed that collegiate faculty do not know what it is like to teach public school. This can be a concern, but most faculty who have taught public school list that proudly in their bios, so make sure to read them to find one who has that important experience of working with those populations. Finally, some music educators view it as an imposition, like “collegiate faculty would never want to work with these students”. I would bet that most collegiate faculty would not consider it an imposition, but if they did, I am sure they would be able to steer you to a person who enjoyed it.

The important conclusion from this article is that collegiate faculty are a resource for practicing music educators to use. Graduation from college does not mean that these resources cease to exist, rather they continue to exist to help the larger music education field, but you might need to seek them out. Encouraging new and seasoned teachers to take advantage of these resources help all parties involved and build relationships that last for years.