The Florida State University College of Music—home to some 650 undergraduate and 350 graduate students from nearly every state in the nation and 20 foreign countries and led by Dean Don Gibson—boasts a more than 80-year legacy of excellence in music education and professional preparation and ranks fifth among its public university peers, according to U.S. News & World Report.
One of the originators of the doctoral degree in music performance, the College hit a particularly high note of praise among its peers in the world of music education this spring.
Recognizing the College for its unparalleled impact on scholarly inquiry, the Journal of Research in Music Education (JRME), the field's premier periodical, announced that more than 25 percent of all JRME articles published between 1990 and 2005 were composed by music educators who received their doctorates from FSU.
"The contributions to JRME, both by FSU faculty and our alumni in music education, have undoubtedly shaped the direction of research in the discipline," Gibson says.
The school's 90 faculty members include world-renowned professionals such as Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Ellen Taaffe Zwilich and Grammy-winning jazz pianist Marcus Roberts.
"The faculty here is extraordinary. They are outstanding artists and scholars. Beyond that, they are absolutely dedicated to their students. The faculty put teaching at the very top of their priorities, and they do so while maintaining tremendous careers as artists and performers," Gibson says.
Florida State's College of Music has been accredited since 1930. Today, with a self-imposed maximum enrollment of approximately 1000 students, it's one of the most comprehensive schools of its kind in the nation, according to Gibson, who was recently elected to the board of directors of the National Association of Schools of Music, the discipline's accrediting organization.
"[The College of Music] really combines many disciplines, in effect, the equivalent of four or five or six independent departments in the typical university setting," Gibson explains.
From the Marching Chiefs to a variety of bands, choral ensembles and orchestras, the FSU College of Music is home to a wide range of musical specialties. The College's degree programs span the world of music—from composition to music theory to individual instruments. There are programs for opera and musical theater. Students also study the music of the world through the degree program in ethnomusicology. After renovation of the 90-year-old Ruby Diamond Auditorium, students will be able to perform in a state-of-the-art concert hall.
The College prepares future music teachers through its music education program. Graduates leave with a knowledge of music theory, history and instrumentation.
"We have a 100 percent placement rate for 50 years at the baccalaureate, master's and doctorate levels. We're very proud of the fact that all of our students are not only capable of getting employment, but they're employed quickly, and the reputation that we have is such that everybody wants an FSU Music Education graduate," says program coordinator Clifford Madsen, who has been with FSU for more than 40 years.
From education to therapy, music has a way of soothing some of the most vulnerable patients. The College of Music started a first-of-its-kind partnership with the Tallahassee Memorial Hospital (TMH) to train students in music therapy—a program that's been around FSU for about half a century.
"Our program at TMH allows us to be the leading program in the nation for medical music therapy," says music therapy professor Jane Standley. "We use music with premature infants in the neonatal intensive care unit, and we provide services to adults who are in the hospital following surgery. "We were the first in the nation to develop this model, and now we've written a book about it. Other universities have seen the benefits of this and are beginning to emulate the model," Standley says.