CMS Announces New Initiatives
Cynthia Crump Taggart
We are at a crossroads as an organization. In order to thrive in the future, The College Music Society, like all organizations, is examining every aspect of its operations to insure that all services support our newly articulated mission statement. (See the March 2009 Newsletter for more information on this mission statement.) This is particularly true in these challenging financial times when resources for all organizations are decidedly scarcer. For CMS, hiring freezes have resulted in fewer vacancies posted in the Music Vacancy List and fewer mailing label requests, resulting in lower revenue. With fewer funds to work with, we are examining and must articulate what CMS values most and how can we move forward as an organization with agility to act on those values. In order to include the membership in this process, I am excited to announce two new initiatives that are specifically designed to help CMS become more discursive and to help the Society articulate what we really value as an organization and how we can act on those values.
The first of these initiatives will occur at our 52nd National Conference in Portland, which will be held from October 23 to 25, 2009. The Program Committee met in March and designed a compelling conference that addresses a wide variety of scholarly topics and is certain to have something that can inform each of our professional lives. However, in addition to scheduling all of the presentations, we are implementing an idea that the CMS Forums and Dialogues Committee has discussed for the past few years but has not to date had the opportunity to initiate.
Sunday morning of the conference will be an important time for articulating the future of CMS. Over the past decade, CMS program committees have been “playing with” the idea of making our conferences more conversational, but have been unable to integrate that concept deeply into the traditional conference format. On Sunday morning in Portland, there will be no formal presentations. Rather, the membership will break out into discussion forums on topics of current interest to music and music in higher education, specifically as they relate to the role that CMS can and should play.
The topics will be chosen by the members when they register at the conference, so each of us will have an opportunity to participate in a discussion that is interesting and to which we wish to contribute. In keeping with CMS’s mission, topics will be of an interdisciplinary or transdisciplinary nature, or of general interest to music faculty. If you have suggestions for discussion topics, please e-mail them to me ([email protected]).
Each forum will be moderated by a member of the CMS Board of Directors. In addition, each will be assigned a recorder who will be asked to write a brief synopsis of the salient points of the forum’s discussion. These synopses will form the basis for discussion in the Board of Directors meeting later that day. In this way, the voice of the membership will immediately inform the discussion of the Board and the direction of the Society. With this in mind, plan on staying in Portland through Sunday morning so that you can participate in the discussion. We hope to have as much of the membership involved as possible. We will be serving coffee as an enticement!
The second initiative is the launching of CMS Summits. As I reported in the March Newsletter, these Summits 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 will bring in nationally recognized plenary speakers and 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. The Summits will also result in action plans for individual CMS members as well as for CMS as an organization. The action plans for CMS 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.
The inaugural CMS Summit will be focused on infusing entrepreneurship into music curricula. This Summit will be held in Nashville, Tennessee, at the Blair School of Music at Vanderbilt University on January 16 and 17, 2010. Gary Beckman, Chairperson of the CMS Committee on Career Development and Entrepreneurship and Chair of the Summit, has articulated two significant issues in the Summit Prospectus that we hope to address. “First, music entrepreneurship education is being taught and led by those originating from two different disciplines – music and business. This has resulted in confusion, miscommunication, disciplinary culture shock and frustration from advocates, educators, and administrators alike.” At this Summit, we will bring leaders from the two disciplines together to share their knowledge and work toward common understandings and appropriate practices. “Second, even with considerable institutional and faculty experience available, there remains a dearth of information concerning basic curricula in entrepreneurship education, including both curricular sequence and its role in the larger institutional setting.” At the Summit, we also will explore curricular models and share effective tools that can be instituted either at the individual faculty or institutional level. One unique feature of this Summit is that the student voice will be heard. This summer, a student group will be working in advance of the Summit to identify what they perceive as barriers and preconceptions concerning entrepreneurship education, to understand the obstacles to participating in this type of education, and to consider strategies that might address these issues. Students will also play an active role in the Summit itself.
If this Summit is successful, we hope to hold a CMS Summit annually. Possible future topics include community engagement, the relationship between the higher education music and the music business and industry communities, and anything else that might rise to the surface during our forums in Portland. As we continue to articulate our concerns and values, the Summits will allow us to address these values and concerns in a rich and systematic way.
So, plan on attending the Portland Conference to engage in the discussion. Come to the first CMS Summit, and encourage your colleagues and students to do so as well. CMS is ready to take some big and meaningful new steps forward. I am excited about how much I will learn through participation in CMS’s new initiatives and look forward to sharing them with you!