Master of Music, Music Education—Conducting Specialization

The Master of Music, Music Education – Conducting Specialization is a CSU exclusive online degree program. The program features an annual Summer Conducting Seminar, the residency portion of the degree, with additional courses offered online during the school year. Classes are designed for current middle school and high school choir, band, and orchestra directors who seek to further their knowledge and conducting skills while earning a master’s degree, completing most of their coursework in three summers. 

Students enrolled in the program will receive well-rounded experience in conducting and further specialized training for the twenty-first century music educator.

The two-week conducting seminar (four credits each summer) includes daily conducting opportunities in all three disciplines, with a workshop orchestra, band, and choir providing further hands-on training. All participants learn to conduct in all three disciplines.

In addition, each student takes three, 3-credit academic classes (music history, analytical techniques, and music research), one 3-credit music education course (Foundations of Music Education), and three 1-credit seminars on various topics of interest to music educators. These courses are either offered on campus during the summer or online during the school year.

The complete program consists of 30 credits. A maximum of six credits of academic courses can be transferred to the student's graduate program from NASM-accredited universities, pending approval by their advisor and the Graduate School.

Program-level Learning Objectives

• Develop the skill, intellect, and musicianship necessary among those who wish to become the next generation of leaders in the field of Music Education.
• Develop a method of score study to help in all educational and professional settings.
• Develop the skills necessary to lead ensembles in all three disciplines (band, orchestra, and choir) of all levels with best-practice rehearsal strategies and methodology.
• Conduct repertoire in all three disciplines (band, orchestra, and choir) of varying difficulty levels, spanning many genres and time periods.
• Integrate best-practice rehearsal strategies with sound conducting technique into the secondary school music classroom and/or community/professional ensemble, in order to inform instruction with conducting gestures.
• Develop the ability to think abstractly, analyze complex ideas or phenomena, synthesize or generalize knowledge across disciplines and sub-disciplines, interpret and apply scholarly findings to specialized topic areas, and communicate ideas effectively in both oral and written forms.
• Develop an awareness of substantive publications in the field of music education and the field of education as a whole.
• Define national trends in music education that impact K-12 educational settings.
• Describe the contemporary role that curriculum and assessment design plays in the teaching-learning process.

Admission

For information about the admissions processes to the Graduate School and School of Music, Theatre, and Dance, as well as information about the summer seminar, please visit our website.