Teaching Responsibilities

As a principal lecturer in music history, I am responsible for overseeing, teaching, designing, and revising our University of North Texas Core music history, non-major courses. I teach three courses each fall and spring semester and, depending on enrollment demands, summer and winter session online courses. In my position, I also mentor our graduate students in music history pedagogy.

Academic Courses

Each semester, I teach Music Appreciation (MUMH2040) for undergraduate, non-music majors. This Creative Arts Core course is offered in both in-person and online formats. This newly redesigned course has three units: musical elements; humanistic elements; and musical taste. We read two texts over the course of the semester: Ben Ratliff’s Every Song Ever: Twenty Ways to Listen to Music in an Age of Musical Plenty and Susan Rogers and Ogi Ogas’s This is What It Sounds Like: What the Music You Love Says About You. The course is designed to explore ways students can become discerning and avid listeners in today’s incredibly diverse and accessible musical world. Music Appreciation incorporates in a team podcast, where students create a new, deeply humanistic “element” that can be heard across all kinds of musics. Students are also assessed through individual and team-based learning (TBL) activities, listen wider challenges, an album review, and an ambient music project.

I also regularly teach Music as Communication (MUMH1610) for undergraduate, non-music majors. This Creative Arts course is offered in both traditional and online formats. Music as Communication considers a broad overview of Western and non-Western musics, in order to explore the way music can communicate all kinds of cultural and historical contexts. I organize this course into two-week topics: defining music, defining culture; music and tradition; music and spirituality; music and gender; music and technology; and music and politics. These units are adaptable to all kinds of musical and historical moments, which keeps the class current and relevant. Students are assessed through individual and group activities, informal blog assignments (Wakes), unit quizzes, and a final remix project.

Beginning 2019, I taught my newly designed Sounds and Cinema (MUMH2050) for undergraduate, non-music majors. This Creative Arts course is offered fully online. Sounds and Cinema focuses on the appreciation and analysis of film music and develops critical listening and viewing abilities. This course also offers a particular kind of film-music history survey, one that focuses on the three points in the history of film sound: the introduction of sound, the introduction of stereo, and the introduction of digital sound. Students are assessed through team discussions, synopses and analyses reports, a sound narrative midterm project, and a final silent film rescoring project.

I am also responsible for teaching sections of 20th-Century Music (MUMH3010), 19th-Century Music (MUMH3000), Music, Gender, Sexuality (MUMH3100), and Music as Politics (MUMH3200) for undergraduates. These Creative Arts Core courses focus on broad repertoire coverage for our music minors and majors, while also serving the general student population. As upper-level courses, each focuses on in-depth engagement with a variety of musical and historical topics. I organize both classes topically, focusing on a range of issues and questions: music and drama; music and protest; music and transcendence; music and the avant-garde; music and identity; music and the voice; music and war; music and political systems; and women and violence. Students are assessed through individual and team-based learning activities, unit exams, music and media reports, and final creative group projects.

The following links will direct you to past course syllabi, assignments, and student assignment examples.

Please note: I am always updated and revising course assignments and approaches, so things do change!

Course Design

My position as a Principal Lecturer in Music History also encourages new course design, redesign, and development. While the Music History Area offers many relevant, exciting Core courses, the increasingly diverse student populations at UNT demand a rethinking of these traditional, repertoire-based courses. My first year saw the redesign of two important courses: Music Appreciation and Music as Communication.

When I arrived at UNT, Music Appreciation (MUMH2040) duplicated the content in Music as Communication (MUMH1610); both contained substantial course materials that focused on a more traditional, chronological survey of Western Art Music. In early 2017, I received a grant from the Center for Learning Experimentation, Application, and Research (CLEAR) Course Design Institute (CDI) to rethink the course objectives and content of Music Appreciation. I restructured the course around the big idea of listening—in both traditional and innovative ways. I also decided to redesign the course into a blended/hybrid format. Given the large class-size, this revision allowed me to break the class into smaller sections two times a week. Typically, the entire class meets on Monday for an interactive lecture, and then half of the class attends on Wednesdays or Fridays to complete a Problem or Team-Based Learning Activity. Music Appreciation was first taught in its new format Fall 2017. I also designed the online version of this course Spring 2018 and offered this course online for the first time the following summer in Summer Sessions I and II. This course was also piloted in a quick, three-week format during UNT’s 2018 Winter Session. Music Appreciation sees enrollments of up to 317 students per section, and even with its increased offerings, enrollments have remained stable.

During the academic year 2015-2016, the music history area was in the process of redesigning the content and UNT Core category for Music as Communication. When I arrived, the course needed to be resubmitted to the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board (THECB), in order to be newly categorized as Component Area Option-A. (This category was new for the UNT Core. Placing MUMH1610 in this category would provide credit hour relief to music majors.) After learning the process, I revised the submission, and the THECB approved this new categorization Summer 2017. That same year, this course was selected to be a part of the Provost’s Online-Core initiative. During Summer 2017, I worked with CLEAR to revise all of the content for an online offering by Spring 2018. This revision was successful, and our first online offering saw solid enrollments. This course, however, saw declining enrollments when it was moved from the Creative Arts Core to the Component Area Option-A Core category. To rectify this situation, this course will be submitted to the THECB Spring 2020, in order to be cross-listed across these Core categories. It is expected that our course enrollments will rebound once the course is appropriately cross-listed.

I am also charged with developing new courses for the Music History Core Curriculum. Since arriving, I have designed three new courses: Sounds and Cinema (MUMH2050); Music, Gender, Sexuality (MUMH3100); and Music as Politics (MUMH3200). These courses will allow for interdisciplinary, diverse approaches, which reflect the student body at UNT, and will also encourage an exploration of broader range of musics (popular, Western, and non-Western) in our music history classroom. These classes were approved by the THECB Summer, 2018 as part of the Component Area Option-A, and are currently in the now cross-listed as Creative Arts Core Courses to ensure stable enrollments. Sounds and Cinema launched as an online course Spring 2020. The addition of this course to our online current online offerings (MUMH1610 and MUMH2040) will allow for more flexibility during summer and winter sessions, thereby attracting larger online enrollment numbers. Music, Gender, and Sexuality and Music as Politics were launched in a blended format in Fall 2020 and Spring 2021 respectively. These courses are in regular rotation and are serving our student populations across the university.

Independent Work with Graduate Students

Our Music History graduate students are not required to take a pedagogy class as part of their graduate coursework. I have co-designed a course in music history pedagogy, which will be offered by Spring 2022. I work closely with our Teaching Fellows (TFs) to craft their syllabi, organize their courses, create Core-approved signature assignments, and improve their teaching.

Working with CLEAR, I organized our first summer workshop, which focused on revising signature assignments and implementing active-learning techniques. Along with Rebecca Geoffroy-Schwinden, I designed a new, more formal approach on mentoring: MUMH6020, Music History Pedagogy. This course launched Spring, 2022. I also observe the TFs once a semester, in order to provide detailed records of their pedagogical approaches.

Alongside the music history area coordinator, I also oversee our Teaching Assistants (TAs). Our TAs focus on lecture preparation, grading, and general classroom management, in order to ensure success in their own classrooms later in their academic careers. To assist in these efforts, I have created lecture observation rubrics for TAs, TA Evaluation Guidelines, and a standard format for observing our TFs.