State of the Society
Cynthia Crump Taggart
The College Music Society is a vibrant organization that is poised to play a leadership role in music in higher education. It has an engaged membership, as evidenced by the outstanding turnout of approximately 500 conference attendees for the Portland national conference in October, and this membership is translating the values of the Society into professional action. Yet, these have been challenging times financially for CMS, as they have been for nearly every organization of its type in the country. The Society is hanging on financially, and the Finance Committee has been taking difficult and decisive steps to keep CMS fiscally solvent. But, in tandem with this, we also need to be looking forward and finding new and innovative ways to serve and increase our membership. As a result, over the next year the Board is embarking upon a visioning process. We will be trying to gather ideas from our membership as we move forward with this visioning process that will determine the future of the organization. In this context, CMS has much to celebrate. Following are just a few of the accomplishment s of the Society from the past year.
Membership
Membership development is a priority for CMS, and we are particularly hoping to bring young faculty members and graduate students into the organization so that we can all benefit from their fresh perspectives. In this light, the students at Appalachian State contacted James Briscoe, who is serving as advisor of the CMS Student Advisory Council, to explore the possibility of starting a student chapter of CMS at Appalachian State. As a result, the first CMS student chapter has been formed and has approximately 15 members. The mission of CMS Student Chapters is to examine issues relating to the contemporary professional lives of student musicians and future educators. CMS Student Chapters will provide forums, seminars, workshops, and panels through which its members can examine and discuss critical issues such as, to name only a few,
- developing an appropriate social conscience by professional musicians
- how to obtain and sustain strong academic citizenship
- making the best out of ones education and applying these principles to teach others
- bridging the gap between K-12 and college education
- how to market oneself as a professional musician and/or multidisciplinary teacher, and
- grant and proposal writing
CMS Student Chapters will be assisted by a faculty advisor who is a current member of the Society on the Chapter’s campus. Jennifer Snodgrass is serving as this faculty member at Appalachian State. We hope that additional student chapters of CMS will form. If you would like to explore the possibility of starting a CMS student chapter at your institution, contact the Executive Office.
Governance
The Board has been working hard on issues of Governance. As you may have read in the March Newsletter, the Society has a newly revised mission statement. The Board reworded slightly and added a clause to the previous mission statement. Following is the new mission statement, with the new portion in bold. “The College Music Society promotes music teaching and learning, musical creativity and expression, research and dialogue, and diversity and interdisciplinary interaction. A consortium of college, conservatory, university, and independent musicians and scholars interested in all disciplines of music, the Society provides leadership and serves as an agent of change by addressing concerns facing music in higher education.” This positions the Society to take a more active leadership role in addressing the new and continuing challenges faced by music in higher education and will guide our deliberations and decisions as the organization moves forward. The Board has also been reviewing the Committee structures and mission statements to make the structure of the organization as transparent as possible.
Professional Activities
Professional Activities are always at the heart of CMS, as they provide growth and development opportunities for members. As a part of this new emphasis on deliberate action and leadership, the Society is beginning to explore new professional activities, such as the first CMS Summit, which focused on infusing entrepreneurship into the music curriculum, and was held in Nashville, Tennessee, at the Blair School of Music at Vanderbilt University on January 16 and 17, 2010. I would like to thank Gary Beckman, Chair of the CMS Committee on Career Development and Entrepreneurship, for all of his hard work on putting together this inaugural summit. As I stated in the May Newsletter, this Summit “will give CMS members an opportunity to explore and discuss in depth a topic of immediate interest with others who are vitally interested in the same topic. This exploration will be informed by the most cutting-edge scholarship; we are bringing in nationally recognized plenary speakers and will ask participants to prepare for the Summit by completing a set of focused readings that will provide a theoretical foundation and shared understanding for the discourse.” These types of summits will position the Society to serve in a leadership capacity and, as appropriate, to identify partners with which to tackle some of the most pressing concerns surrounding music in higher education.
This year’s national conference in Portland was outstanding, thanks to the leadership of Faun Tiedge, Program Committee Chair, and the Program Committee. We look forward to Minneapolis in September 2010. In addition, CMS has made tremendous headway this year in planning further ahead for its national and international conferences. Planning far in advance allows us to negotiate cheaper rates with hotels so that we can keep the costs of our conferences down as much as possible, which is particularly critical in this economic climate. It is also important in our efforts to attract graduate students and new faculty members. We already have sites chosen for the next 3 national conferences beyond 2010. In 2011 we will be in Richmond, VA, in 2012 we will hold a joint conference with NASM in San Diego, and in 2013 we will be in Boston. After a tremendously successful conference in Croatia, thanks to the work of Bill Everett, Program Chair, and the members of the Program Committee, as well as the tireless work of Peter Park at the Executive Office, South Korea has been identified as the site of the 2011 International Conference. John Robison has agreed to serve as Program Chair, and I am confident that he and his Program Committee will plan a conference that should not be missed.
CMS has been active in terms of publications, as well, and the Publication Committee has some exciting news to report. James Mack Burk and Pendragon Press were recently notified by the Association for Recorded Sound Collections that his grandscale reference work on Charles Ives-A Charles Ives Omnibushas earned the 2009 Award for Excellence in Historical Recorded Sound Research in the category Best Research in Recorded Classical Music. The announced intention of the ARSC awards program is “to recognize and draw attention to the finest work now being published in the field of recorded sound research.” Dr. Burk’s encyclopedic study of Ivesiana, which contains over one thousand pages, was published last November as Volume 18 of Monographs & Bibliographies in American Music sponsored by The College Music Society. Michael J. Budds serves The Society as editor of the series.
In addition, CMS has a brand new publication. For the 50th anniversary celebrations CMS commissioned Mary Anne Rees of Portland State University to write a History of CMS. This history documents the development of The College Music Society and the important role that the Society has played in music in higher education.
Career Services
Career services and development are important to the members of CMS, and we continue to try to support the needs of the members by providing opportunities for them to expand their professional boundaries. For example, this year the CMS Committee on Academic Leadership and Administration, with the leadership of Keith Ward, held an extremely successful pre-conference workshop to explore issues of leadership, management, strategic planning, personnel matters, budget planning, and advocacy. In addition, the Committee on Instructional Technology and Information Services, with David Williams as Chair, held its fourth pre-conference technology workshop, which also was outstanding.
Engagement and Outreach
As you probably know from reading my Newsletter columns, one of my professional priorities is community engagement. Over the past three years, the CMS Fund has supported engagement initiatives in three ways. First, it helped to pay for travel to and from community engagement activities that have become a regular part of our national conferences. During the Portland conference, we had many engagement activities in the greater Portland community. In addition, the Fund helped to support engagement activities at the regional level as well. This support took two forms for those regional chapters who chose to participate. First the fund helped to support travel for invited presenters of engagement educational sessions as a way of facilitating engagement education for the CMS membership. Second, it paid for the travel within the community for those who did engagement sessions out in the community at regional conferences. Finally, as a way of bringing what was learned at conferences home to our local communities, the Fund supported a Seed Grant initiative to stimulate engagement activities in the home communities of it members. Particularly deserving projects received recognition as well as some financial support, and over the past three years, the fund has supported over 75 innovative engagement projects. A great deal has been accomplished in terms of making community engagement an integral part of the CMS agenda. The three-year funding period from the CMS Fund for engagement activities has drawn to a close, and it is now time to think about the next steps for continuing this agenda. The Board of the CMS Fund has agree to continue to fund the Seed Grant initiatives, and the Community Engagement Committee, with Donna Emmanuel as Chair, is in the process of developing a five-year strategic plan to clearly articulate its long-term agenda for Community Engagement within CMS.
CMS Fund and Anniversary Campaign
For the past two years, the Anniversary Committee, with David Woods as Chair, has been engaged actively in the “CMS Beyond 50” campaign in order to, according to the campaign’s mission statement, “ provide the resources necessary to support innovative and exemplary approaches to those areas that CMS has been involved in over the past several years: engagement and outreach, music in general studies, and both undergraduate and graduate curricula and teaching.” The four-year campaign is half complete and has raised half of its $100,000 goal. I hope that you will consider giving generously so that the campaign is able to meet its goal and provide important financial assistance to enhance the work of the Society.
The CMS Fund, under the leadership of Tayloe Harding, has been actively supporting the work of the society. This year it received a generous grant from the Yamaha Corporation of America in support of five resident fellowships for the 2009– 2010 academic year. The Yamaha In-Residence Fellowships support the education of professional music student performers by providing the opportunity to bring together musicians, music educators, and the general public to develop stronger and more effective musical environments in their communities. These Fellowships are intended to encourage graduate music students in performance to become more effective advocates for their art now and in their future careers, and to be part of the music unit’s expansion of professional programs that provide training in community engagement and outreach activities. These Fellowships enable graduate students to conduct residencies in various community institutions, including educational, artistic, and civic enterprises. Our first five recipients of this award have been identified, and were announced in the November Newsletter.
The CMS Fund continues to work towards fully funding the Robby D. Gunstream Education in Music Award, which is a $1,000 cash prize awarded to recognize the most imaginative and effective program of interaction by a higher education music faculty member or music unit with local or area organizations, such as schools, civic associations, and faith communities, that furthers education in music. To date, it has raised more than half of its $20,000 goal.
In addition, I am delighted to announce that the Fund is establishing a CMS Technology Initiative Award, which was initiated with a gift from David Williams, CMS President- Elect. His gift has been matched by others, including many of our music industry partners, so that $10,000 of the $12,000 endowment goal is already in place. This award will be given annually to a CMS member who has demonstrated exceptional initiative at integrating technology into the music curriculum in higher education.
Kudos and Thank-Yous
Four Board members are completing their terms, and, having served with them over the past several years, I can attest to the fact that they have served the Society extremely well. All of these Board members were creative thinkers who could see the “big picture.” They gave generously of their time and their insights. These Board members are Betty Anne Younker, Music Education Board Member, Simon Carrington, Performance Board Member, Diane Follett, Treasurer, and Kathleen Lamkin, who served as President-Elect, President, and Immediate Past President. We will miss their vision, collegiality, and leadership. In January, we welcome four new Board members. Susan Conkling will be beginning her term as Music Education Board Member, Christine Beard as Performance Board Member, Mary Anne Reese as Treasurer, and David Williams as President-Elect. I look forward to working with them as the Board embarks upon it visioning process.
I would be remiss without giving thanks to CMS Executive Director Robby Gunstream and all of the staff in the national office. Without the high-quality, thoughtful, efficient work in Missoula, CMS would grind to a halt.
Finally, thanks to you, members of the Society. Without an engaged, vital membership, we would be nothing.