Graduate Conducting Program Looks Promising

The centennial year has brought exciting academic progress to Messiah College. The psychology department is ready to close its first semester of its Masters Degree program in Counseling, and the art department will have its final site visit for approval of the Masters in Art Education on December 17. The music department is on the precipice of beginning its program for a Masters in Conducting. So far, enrollment is beyond the initial projections of the music faculty.According to Richard Roberson, Dean of the School of the Arts, there was a waiting list of about thirty prospective students before the conducting program "went live" a month ago. "To the best of our knowledge, none of those have gone away," says Roberson.

Of these, the nine prospective students have completed the application process to begin classes in January. "This is a busy time of the year, especially for musicians, so they're not all applying right now." Roberson expects to have a full class with 15 students in the January.

"This is beyond our goal.our goal for the first year was to have ten students," says Roberson. If enrollment continues to progress like this, Roberson says that they "might even have to offer two sections" of the class being offered in March.

The conducting program has its greatest appeal for current music educators, some of who will be working on the degree to keep their certification and others who are seeking enrichment credit. "We've structured this degree around those working professionals" says Brad Genevro, one of the administrators of the program. "It's enrolling from a lot of different directions, and that's what we thought would happen," says Roberson.

Amidst the tough economic climate, Roberson and Genevro remain optimistic. "We tried to be conservative about all of our numbers," Roberson says. "If we get just five students in the program each year, we'll break even, so ten is even better." Since the interest in the program already indicates that enrollment will exceed projections, the program should almost pay for itself.

"People tend to look at a university or college differently if they have advanced degrees," says Genevro, citing one of the reasons for starting the program. "This will help out with recruitment at the undergraduate level too."

There are three tracks for the conducting program: choral, orchestral, and wind band. According to Roberson, there is already interest in all three tracks, particularly for the conducting symposia that will be offered here during the summer of 2010. Genevro has given a non-credit symposium for conductors of wind bands for the last couple years, and this will transition to a part of the graduate program.

Linda Tedford and Rachel Cornacchio will team-teach the choral symposium, and Timothy Dixon will lead the orchestral symposium, which will coincide with a summer string camp offered on campus. Undergraduate students will be able to audit the symposia if they so choose, says Roberson.

"I'm looking forward to getting it started. It's been a long road to get here," says Genevro. But now that the program is ready to go, he looks onto the next semester with excitement. "It's going to give [the faculty here] the opportunity to teach and research at a different level than we're used to doing.