Research
Scholarship of Teaching and Learning
My work with Scholarship of Teaching and Learning began at my first full-time appointment at Winston-Salem State University. I come from a family of music educators and had some success at my earlier adjunct positions. I even won the “Outstanding Graduate Teaching Assistant” award during my doctoral work at UNCG. I was dismayed to find that none of my usual methods were effective with the population of an HBCU, and so I resolved to improve my craft. I took advantage of nearly every opportunity offered by the Center for Teaching and Learning and built a habit of continuous experimentation. I ultimately created an action study involving self-assessment with video in my aural skills course, which I presented to both SoTL and music conferences.
“‘I’m Sorry, but our Time is Up’: Promoting Student Engagement in Aural Skills Courses.” College Music Society Great Lakes Chapter (Ball State University), and College Music Society Mid-Atlantic Chapter (Appalachian State University), 2010.
(Panelist). “Faculty Members Experiences Using Action Research in Teaching and Learning.” Lilly Conference on College and University Teaching (Greensboro NC), 2009.
SoTL at High Point University
I was originally hired to develop and teach a four-semester technology-integrated comprehensive musicianship curriculum that ran from AY 2010-11 to AY 2021-22. I had four months to develop the program, and I quickly became accustomed to a constant cycle of ideation, prototyping, and assessment in my pedagogy. I experimented widely with active learning approaches from experiential and problem-based learning, to Ungrading and Place-as-Text pedagogy, and my ability to be comfortable working with new ideas and approaches opened several opportunities across the university. As my vision widened, I took advantage of a number of campus grants to expand the scope of my explorations, and began running action studies to assess their impact
I was recruited to teach in the Honors Scholars Program by founding director Bill Carpenter in Spring 2017, and under his mentorship, joined the inaugural cohort of Honors Faculty Fellows the following semester. To date, I have developed five interdisciplinary honors courses, including a full City-as-Text course taught in Prague, CZ, and was asked to stay on for a second term as a Faculty Fellow. These courses have given me an even wider scope for exploring innovative pedagogy, particularly in ePortfolio, ungrading, and experiential learning. I developed two presentations based on this work, both of which were accepted by the European Honors Council.
I have found my real passion, however, in general education. As with the honors courses, HPU-Lead offers a number of exciting possibilities for engaging interdisciplinary work in such diverse areas as coding, religion, Asian Studies, and wellness/resilience. My current SoTL work has grown out of my first year seminar DIS 1000 Music, Resilience, and Life Skills, which has given me a forum to explore relationship-rich education, resilience pedagogy, and Universal Design for Learning. In AY 2023-24 I ran an action study to measure the effectiveness of my resilience pedagogy, for which a preliminary report was immediately accepted for presentation to the Academic Resilience Consortium. In the coming years, I plan to explore Universal Design more thoroughly, as I am coming to believe that teaching for Neurodiversity is simply better teaching.
SoTL Presentations and Grants
"Music, Resilience, and Life Skills: A Preliminary Report." Academic Resilience Consortium: Reach for Resilience (Winston-Salem, NC), 2024.
A preliminary report of the results of my Resilience Pedagogy Action Study (IRB-FY2024-8) in DIS 1000 Music, Resilience, and Life Skills. The full study runs through AY 2023-24, and the report covers only the data from Fa23.
Engaged coding assistance from HPU faculty and students.
“Building Skills with Ungrading.” World of Talent 2021: International Conference on Talent Development and Honors Education (Hanze University, Groningen, Netherlands - Online), 2021.
QEP Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Grant. $6000. Growth Mindset and Motivation Action Study (IRB Protocol 201908-833) Fall 2019-Spring 2021
“An Integrated Approach to Growth Mindset,” In-house presentation. QEP Growth Mindset Faculty Series, November 2021.
“Growth Mindset Action Study: A Preliminary Report.” Accepted for International Conference on Talent Development 2020 (Hanze University, Groningen, Netherlands), 2020. Conference cancelled due to COVID-19.
“Engage Students with Place-as-Text,” In-House Presentation. HPU Center for Innovative Teaching and Learning “Ed Talk,” 2019.
Common Experience/Cultural Programs Grants. $1500 total. Spring 2019.
Integrated chapters from the Common Read, How to Fly a Horse by Kevin Ashton, on the creative process into MUS 1600 and MUS 2101
Stipends applied to bringing the Sierra Duo to campus for a performance and discussion with students about their own creative process
Service Learning Grant, $2000. Spring 2017.
Developed MUS 3900 Serving Communities through Music Education (yet to be taught).
Cultural Programs Grant. $2400. Spring 2017.
Set up a shared blog between students in MUS 2001 and MUS 3000 with professional artists from New York to discuss performance preparation.
Stipend applied to bringing Peter Seidenberg and Hui-Mei Lin for a performance and masterclass with HPU students
“Active Learning in the Music Core Curriculum: A Preliminary Report.” College Music Society Mid-Atlantic Chapter (University of North Carolina at Greensboro), 2011.
Scholarship of Integration
I began my work in the Scholarship of Integration by considering the nature of hybrid musical styles, in connection with performances of Hans Huyssen’s Ugubu (Rising and Falling… and rising) (1998). Huyssen, a native of South Africa, mentioned in a performance note that he wanted the Western and African elements of the work to remain distinct, so that “they would clarify and enhance their respective qualities and differences, which could then be treated with greater mutual understanding and respect.” I wrestled with this idea throughout the 2000s as I performed similarly hybrid works by Vu Nhat Tan, Tania León, Ljubica Marić, Alireza Mashyehki, and most significantly, Isang Yun. I worked with Yun’s Glissées pour violoncelle seul (1971) for some time, finally having a breakthrough when I encountered Deleuze and Guattari’s A Thousand Plateaus.
Publications
“Musical Style and Social Identity in Khmer Rouge Songs: A Preliminary View.” Asia Dialogue, January 9, 2019.
In connection with this paper, I also had a short piece in the Phnom Pehn Post: “Music – A Propaganda Promoting the Khmer Rouge Socialist Identity.” December 24, 2018.
“Performing Cultural Hybridity in Isang Yun's Glissées pour violoncelle seul (1970).” Music Theory Online 24 no. 3 (September 2019).
Cited in:
Momii, Toru. “Music Analysis and the Politics of Knowledge Production: Interculturality in the Music of Honjoh Hidejirō, Miyata Mayumi, and Mitski.” PhD Diss, Columbia University, 2021
Utz, Christian. Musical Composition in the Context of Globalization: New Perspectives on Music History in the 20th and 21st Century. Revised Edition. Translated by Laurence Sinclair Willis. Music and Sound Culture no. 43. Bielefeld: Transcript, 2021.
“History and Sustainability of Bunraku, The Japanese Puppet Theater.” Education About Asia 23 no. 2 (Fall 2018), 51-4.
Having established a rough methodology with Glissées, I next tackled Toshio Mauyzumi’s Bunraku for Solo Cello (1960). I had the unique opportunity to travel to Osaka, Japan, where I attended a performance of the Bunraku theater, interviewed professional Bunraku performers, and sat in on traditional music classes and lessons at the Osaka Conservatory of Music. This experience profoundly shaped my understanding not only of Japanese music but also of music as a social experience. I have come to believe that the physical environment of the musical experience, as well as the social identity it creates among the musicians and the audience is as crucial to the understanding of music as the music itself. My research has since followed a more sociological path and I have incorporated more field work in my teaching, taking classes to observe live performances of the North Carolina Opera, a Benedictine Vespers service at Belmont Abbey, and Country Music shows at local venues.
My current work continues exploring the sociology of music through an extended study of music and identity, politics, nostalgia, and hybridity in Cambodia, with a special focus on the period from its independence in 1952 to the end of the Khmer Rouge regime in 1979. Please click on the flag to the left for more detail.
Other Research and Publications
“Review of Looking for the “Harp” Quartet by Markand Thakar.” Music Theory Online 21 no. 4 (December 2015).
“Essential Concepts for Schenkerian Performance.” Indiana Theory Review 24, no. 1 (Spring/Fall 2003), 129-46.
Cited in:
Dodson, Alan. “Performance, Grouping and Schenkerian Alternative Readings in Some Passages from Beethoven’s ‘Lebewohl’ Sonata,” Music Analysis 27 No. 1 (March 2008), 107-134.
Luong, Vivian. “Schenkerian Performance and Analysis in Dialogue: A Reconsideration of Beethoven’s Piano Sonata in E minor, Op. 90, i.” MA Thesis. McGill University, 2012.
Lo, Kai Yin. "A Deleuzian and Guattarian Reading of Robert Schumann’s Instrumental Variations." PhD diss., University of Minnesota, 2022.Nakajima, Ayako Karen. “Effects of Lessons in Schenkerian analysis upon students’ performances of tonal works.” MA Thesis. University of British Columbia, 2013.
Noh, H. Gerrey. “My Mother’s Death: Generative Principles in Schenkerian Performance Expression.” PhD diss. Kent State University, 2013.
Song, Moo Kyoung. “연장의표현적의미[Expressive Meanings of the Prolongation].” 음악이론연구, [Music Theory Research] 28 (2017), 8-42
“Schenkerian Analysis and the Performance of Large-Scale Structure.” D.M.A. diss. University of North Carolina at Greensboro, 2003.
Cited in:
Feeley, John. “Classical Guitar Music by Irish Composers: Performing Editions and Critical Commentary.” PhD diss, National University of Ireland Maynooth, 2007.
Lee, Dongho. "Self-Taught: Using the Imaginary Continuo and Reduction Analysis as Pedagogical Approach to Performance Studies through the Lens of JS Bach’s Pièce D’orgue, BWV 572." PhD diss., Indiana University, 2019.
Nakajima, Ayako Karen. “Effects of Lessons in Schenkerian analysis upon students’ performances of tonal works,” MA Thesis, University of British Columbia, 2013.
Peng, Duo-Lin. “The Unpublished Manuscript of Cellist and teacher Luigi Silva: Implications of the ‘Vademecum’ for String Playing.” Ph.D. diss. New York University, 2011.
Stein, Cassius. "Harmony and impulse in the music of Agustin Barrios." PhD diss., Indiana University, 2022.