Purpose Statement
The Doctor of Musical Arts with specializations in Composition, Conducting, Jazz Studies, and Performance is a professional degree program for advanced musicians who hold master’s degrees in music and seek to realize their potential for making unique and individualized contributions to the practice, pedagogy, and scholarship of their artistic disciplines in ways that prepare them for relevant careers in higher education. For all areas of specialization, it is expected that students will achieve professional-level competencies as musicians, scholars, and teachers.
Program Outcomes
Students in the Doctor of Musical Arts degree with specializations in Composition, Conducting, Jazz Studies, and Performance will:
- develop professional-level composition, conducting, and performance ability,
- use critical thinking skills to inform interpretive decisions in composition, conducting, and/or performance,
- identify and evaluate disparate views specific to the student's chosen area of expertise,
- demonstrate the ability to write within the context of future professional assignments,
- demonstrate the ability to state an informed position/argument on discipline-related topics or interdisciplinary topics and support their argument with scholarship,
- develop the ability to communicate effectively within a larger community of scholar-musicians with the goal of advancing new ideas within the student’s chosen area of expertise,
- develop a secondary area of expertise that would be beneficial in the student’s chosen professional job market,
- secondary areas may include discipline-specific content areas (theory, history, music education, etc.), entrepreneurship, grant-writing, sound production, etc.
- develop professional resources necessary for the pursuit of future positions in higher education or in the professional world.