Faculty participation in MTNA: professional service or continuing education?

American Music Teacher, Oct-Nov, 2004 by Kenneth Williams

College faculty members play a vital role in MTNA--a role quite distinct from that of their IMT colleagues. College faculty must demonstrate how their participation fits into the three broad areas of productivity in which all college professors are evaluated: teaching, research and service. For most faculty members, participation in MTNA is considered service to the profession and fails into the third category, one that often tends to be regarded as less important for academics than teaching and research or performance. It is true that activities such as adjudication, presenting master classes and holding various offices, comprise invaluable services to the music teaching profession. But, is participation in MTNA simply a one-way street in which professors merely provide services? Or are faculty both beneficiaries and contributors in these endeavors?

Ernest Boyer offers some interesting insights on the nature of service for an academic in Scholarship Reconsidered: Priorities of the Professoriate. These insights especially are relevant to the mutually beneficial nature of participation in MTNA for college music faculty. Boyer served as president of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, a think tank that supports excellence in teaching at all levels, and the organization that devised the classification system for various types of institutions in higher education. When reconsidering the various types of activities in which college professors participate, Boyer broadens the perspectives for teaching, research and service into new types of scholarship. Rather than retain the amorphous nature of "service" as a category that covers all kinds of projects and activities related to academic citizenship, Boyer affirms that service activities may constitute serious, demanding work that requires the same rigor and accountability traditionally associated with research activities. Boyer redefines this category as the "scholarship of application," a type of activity in which academics may glean new intellectual understandings in the very process of applying knowledge through service to the profession. The scholarship of application is not a one-way street in which professors merely provide services for their colleagues in the profession. Rather, professors gain new insights into their own discipline and are engaging in continuing education that revitalizes their creative endeavors and teaching.

When suggesting criteria for assessment of these types of activities, Boyer poses a poignant question: "In what ways has the work not only benefited the recipients of such activity but also added to the professor's own understanding of his or her academic field?" Perhaps the greatest opportunity for applied music faculty to engage in the scholarship of application that Boyer envisioned is through attendance and active participation in the broad variety of activities that comprise the national conferences. The more obvious benefits of conference participation include informative sessions, artistic performances, exhibits of new materials and technology and networking opportunities. More importantly, though, are the opportunities to gain insights into the needs of the future classes of college students through direct contact with the students and their teachers. Naturally, one could view MTNA as a pipeline to a vast pool of potential music majors. Student performances at the national competitions and winners' recitals are amazing demonstrations of the finest talent among pre-college musicians.

But the next generation of college students includes both the prodigious and the average. In fact, to the chagrin of some teachers, competition winners often choose to major in fields other than music, and students of more modest accomplishment aspire to music careers. It is the duty of college faculty to prepare for all kinds of incoming students. Many of the most talented students will want to continue their musical growth as complementary to their studies in other fields. College faculty will be most successful when they are able to design curricula and musical experiences that are best suited to the needs of the next generation of college students, music majors and non-music majors. Opportunities to better understand the needs of these students comprise a unique benefit of attendance by faculty members at the MTNA national conferences. By taking advantage of these opportunities, college faculty members continue their own education and engage in the scholarship of application through contact with a broad range of music professionals and the next generation of talented students. Based on the enhanced understanding of their own artistic discipline, music professors can answer Boyer's poignant question by describing exactly what responses and curricular innovations will best prepare American colleges for tomorrow's students. Next year's freshman class is currently studying in the studios of independent music teachers. What do you know about them? Learn as much as you can by attending the 2005 National Conference in Seattle.