Graduate Courses

Introduction to the concepts of the live concert recording. Microphone selection, characteristics, and placement, as well as the acoustic problems encountered in concert halls will be discussed. Students will have the opportunity to apply the lecture material by recording undergraduate rehearsals and recitals.

In this studio class, students work on specific advanced skills required for today’s professional orchestral and ensemble conductor. They practice challenging pieces from the orchestral repertoire, with a specific emphasis on contemporary pieces of music. Students also develop a comprehensive approach to rehearsal planning and structure, including specific strategies that allow time optimization.

In this studio class, students work on specific advanced skills required for the professional music theater conductor. They study works from the music theater repertoire, with a specific emphasis on shows of various periods and genres. Students develop a comprehensive approach to rehearsal planning and tructure, including specific strategies that allow time optimization.

In this studio class, students develop foundational conducting skills for the professional conductor. This includes specific techniques associated with choral conducting, instrumental conducting, and conducting synchronized with visual media. Topics include arms/baton technique, rehearsing the ensemble, score study techniques, and conducting with a click track.

In this studio class, students build upon foundational conducting skills to develop specific techniques to conduct instrumental ensembles with a focus on the orchestral repertoire. Students practice seminal pieces of the history of western orchestral music that serve as case studies to develop a sophisticated set of instrumental conducting skills.

Conflict is an important part of our daily lives. Conflict is omnipresent in interpersonal relationships, workplace, national and international affairs, etc. In this class we will examine theories and research that help us understand the nature and roots of conflict, its evolution, and strategies that lead to its resolution. The first part of the course will focus on roots and dynamics of conflict, whereas the second part will focus on strategies to resolve conflict. Students will have the opportunity to apply the knowledge gained in this class to conflicts at different levels: Interpersonal, organization, community, and international.

Consultation skills are central to the roles of counselors working in schools and various mental health settings. This course exposes students to consultation theory, research, and practice in settings serving children, adults, and families. By integrating experiences and observations in field placements, students develop skills to examine variables related to client, consultee, and organizational/systems contexts to implement and assess the effectiveness of various consultation approaches within diverse communities and settings.

This course examines theories of consumption, consumer culture, commodification, branding, and the changing patterns of media consumption. We will investigate the history of consumer society from the nineteenth century through contemporary consumer practices shaped by digital media, changing spaces of consumerism, taste and lifestyle, the consumption of entertainment media, and critiques and resistances to consumerism.

Course investigates art education as deployed through art organization partnerships with contemporary artists as a means to instigate dialogue with local communities. Topics include social justice, object-based learning, and the broader cultural context surrounding art education. Through critical reading/discussion and site visits, students form an approach to community collaboration and situate themselves within practitioner debates about art’s broader relevance. Literature includes sociology of culture, contemporary art theory, museum education, and museum studies.

From furniture to digital devices, virtually everything that exists is designed. Why and how does design play such an important role in society? This seminar examines its expanding impact beginning with the post World War II era, with an emphasis on how design shapes consumer culture and how consumer culture conversely influences design. The course analyzes contemporary design in the context of architecture, interiors and the decorative arts, products, graphics, fashion, and interactive media.

Covers production, distribution and consumption of food in the context of social, cultural, technological and biological processes under conditions of globalization. Employing approaches from the humanities and the social sciences, this course prepares students to initiate the process of analyzing the current American food system, its global connections, and proposed local alternatives that is developed further in other courses. Through lectures, readings and research the students master established facts and concepts about contemporary urban food cultures and produce new knowledge of the same.

Drawing from contemporary issues in education, this course analyzes the ways in which education contributes to attitudes and behaviors, which in turn influence social processes such as democratization, peace, conflict, and development around the world. Using current events as a point of departure, the course explores the different ways that education can contribute to social change.

In-depth study of selected topics in music since 1945 emphasizing developments in the recent avant-garde.

Performance of standard and contemporary literature for percussion instruments.

This advanced course involves in-depth explorations of contemporary frameworks in music therapy such as community music therapy, feminist music therapy, and resource-oriented music therapy. The course uses a colloquium format with student-led discussions. Students will develop the ability to critically evaluate the arguments underlying these orientations and to apply the thinking that characterizes contemporary orientations to their own clinical approaches.

This course examines critical issues related to contemporary K–12 teacher policies and labor movements, focusing on factors affecting the equitable distribution of teachers, the fundamentals of modern teacher policy reforms, and the political and social conditions underlying recent teacher labor movements. Students leave this course with a strong overview of current teacher policy and labor market issues as well as an in-depth examination of a focus area they select.

Immerses the student composer in creating music for a range of visual media including movies, shorts, television, and animation. Topics of inquiry include the visual, aural, narrative, textual and subtextual components of communication with moving images; the aesthetics, techniques and technicalities of spotting and synchronizing music; orchestration, both traditional and digital; production and mixing; and compositional practices unique to the work of scoring for moving images. Weekly scoring assignments and in-class critiques.

This course seeks to cover the landscape in contemporary theorizing and research on cultural globalization. It is organized broadly around three partially competing/partially complementary theories of globalization - homogenization, enduring cultural differences, and hybridization. We will attempt to bring each of these theories to life with case studies of the production, distribution, and reception of cultural forms and experiences from across the globe. We will also review research methods, including cross-national comparative research design, ethnography, in-depth interviews, content analysis, and historical/archival research methods, focusing in particular on the methods used in course readings.

This course provides a detailed exploration of the ways in which the modern classical singer, musical theatre performer, and pop singer must use their talents and intuition on social media to develop and market their brand, personal sensibility and point of view on the world. Vocals and live performance style techniques for the camera will be addressed in a laboratory environment, as well as techniques to target audiences on Tik-tok, Instagram, Facebook, websites, virtual auditions, and self-submissions.

This course combines the technical abilities a student has learned in the voice studio with the performance and practical skills needed to be a well-rounded performer. Focus on performance skills required for a hybrid singer, including but not limited to truthful communication, stage presence, movement, the ability to use the prosody of language/speech inflections to inform vocalism and psychological gesture, and appropriateness of style and genre.