STRATEGIC PLAN
In consultation with the School of Music’s Executive Committee and Director, the Dean of the College of Fine and Applied Arts (FAA) appointed and charged a Steering Committee in fall 2023 to devise a strategy for the School of Music that would articulate priorities and provide guidelines for decision-making over the five-year period 2024-2029. The actionable goals and steps that follow represent a synthesis of input received from faculty, staff, and students through webform surveys, town halls, and numerous in-person meetings of groups and individuals. The committee’s report was submitted to the Dean and Director in May 2024. (The full report may be found at https://music.illinois.edu/.)
MISSION STATEMENT
As part of a public land-grant research university, the School of Music shapes the next generation of performers, creators, scholars, and educators who lead the future of music locally, nationally, and globally. Through academic rigor, innovative artistry, inclusive excellence, and collaboration we empower students to develop their artistic voice, intellectual curiosity, and professional skills. Our faculty of distinguished creators, educators, scholars, and performers lead by example, inspiring students to explore new frontiers in music’s historically and globally rich cultural landscape.
STATEMENT ON DIVERSITY, EQUITY, ACCESS, AND INCLUSION
The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign School of Music regards diversity, equity, and access as core values integral to guiding our progress toward excellence. We embrace a broad and comprehensive concept of diversity that serves as a springboard toward mutual understanding. We appreciate diversity as a strength and intentionally cultivate an inclusive climate in our daily endeavors as faculty, staff, and students. We are committed to respecting differences; accepting multiple perspectives; and striving to identify, disrupt, and rectify bias, prejudice, and oppression in our classrooms and community.
Make community engagement an essential activity of the School.
• Explore additional opportunities to foster partnerships with local musicians and communities—particularly underrepresented musicians and communities.
— Bring more local musicians into the classroom across the curriculum and into the School of Music spaces.
— Send more student musicians and faculty into the community, through continuing education courses and workshops addressing a broader range of idioms and traditions.
• Explore building community partnerships into coursework with the intent to engage more performers and educators with primary and secondary school music programs.
• Establish a stronger more agile social media, website, and print presence.
— prioritize hiring a full-time communications coordinator.
• Build on and expand the successes of the Illinois Community Music Academy to better connect to the community.
• Seek campus support for our efforts to connect with campus and community, including the Krannert Center Youth Series, the special advisor to the Chancellor on Arts Integration and the Campus-Community Compact to Accelerate Social Justice.
• Establish and/or grow connections with pre-college programs such as Uniting Voices Chicago, After School Matters, Chi Arts, Merit School of Music, and the Chicago Musical Pathways Initiative.
GOALS AND STEPS
Promote greater access and connectivity for faculty and students with varied musical talents and interests.
• Establish stronger connections between students and our alumni and industry networks to amplify curricular and co-curricular efforts.
• Support visiting artists and scholars from music industries to teach students about current trends.
• Cultivate and sustain multi-area faculty and student affinity cohorts in areas of interest, including:
— arts leadership
— business, finance, and entrepreneurship
— commercial music and media
— community engagement
— global music and transcultural scholarship
— mental and physical health in the performing arts
— video/audio recording and engineering.
Foster improvements in the student experience.
• Through our curriculum and mentorship, develop all students as strong leaders, whether as performers, artists, teachers, and scholars.
• Reinitiate discussions about the undergraduate core, examining:
— accessibility for students from a broad range of backgrounds, interests, and talents.
— hours in classes, lessons, and ensembles.
— relevance of offerings within our various degree tracks.
— potential flexibility in the curriculum for reducing the number of required courses in the B.Mus. and B.A.
• Initiate a comprehensive review of the schedule to reduce chronic conflicts among ensembles and academic courses.
• Identify and articulate optimal learning outcomes for doctoral degrees.
• Devise and integrate required pedagogy courses into programs of study.
• Build a mechanism to identify new and returning graduate students who could be assigned a teaching assistantship across areas to better prepare them for versatile careers.
• Explore new models for the DMA capstone project to reflect relevance to the field of study, academic coursework completed, and industry trends.
• Prioritize mental health counseling services designed for performing arts students.
• Expand preemptive health and wellness education.
• Open and sustain multiple pathways for honest student communication about their experience in the School.
— Expand the Student Advisory Board.
— Distribute brief student-experience surveys once per semester.
• Empower, and provide funds for, the Student Advisory Board to organize twiceannual schoolwide social events.
• Invest in high-functioning, sustainable, IT-supported classroom technology.
• Sustain the Food/Emergency Pantry and winter clothes drive.
• Provide sustainable support for qualified collaborative pianists.
Strengthen crosscampus connections.
• Establish and promote opportunities for dual majors and degrees with the assistance of the FAA Academic Programs office.
— identify and communicate with candidates for such majors and degrees early in the admissions process.
— Reference and foreground current students pursuing such majors and degrees to make their work more visible through the website, social media, and sonorities.
— Coordinate advising of such students across units, as needed.
• Broaden access to the music curriculum for non-majors.
— Strengthen communication with campus admissions regarding admitted students who seek musical opportunities on campus.
— Connect with those students in advance of their matriculation to encourage participation in music courses and ensembles.
— Review the music minor’s requirements and accessibility.
• Promote more aggressively the growing B.A. program’s “Music + Option” for music students seeking to engage more with non-music courses.
• Review and articulate the rationale for sustaining the School’s membership in the National Association of Schools of Music.
Promote greater collaboration and stronger shared governance.
• Encourage co- and team-teaching in subjects and/or methods in which collaborative expertise would produce valuable educational outcomes, and articulate load implications for that teaching.
• Embrace the university’s research mission more explicitly and define excellence in music research and creative activity to make it more legible as such.
• Adopt (opt-in) annual themes that connect courses and activities across areas with advance planning at least one year ahead.
• Appoint representatives of affinity cohorts to advise the School’s leadership.
• Eliminate redundancy in shared governance through revision of the by-laws.
• Build leadership channels by engaging more faculty in leadership roles with responsibilities to advance strategic initiatives and establish mentoring supports.
Build a stronger, more cohesive community for faculty and staff.
• Make space in the schedule for regular all-School and faculty-staff gatherings and events.
• Encourage and support professional development for faculty and staff.
• Establish and sustain more ways to publicly recognize faculty and staff excellence.
• Clarify and strengthen elements of the relationship between the School and Krannert Center for the Performing Arts.
Develop more faculty performance opportunities with consideration for staff capacity.
Develop more reliable lines of communication for School engagement with guest artists.
Investigate coordinating a predictable annual cycle of ensemble performance dates.
Appoint a School representative to the KCPA Venue Coordination Committee.
Foster financial understanding among faculty and staff with transparency and accountability in financial management.
• Share detailed up-to-date budget information annually or semi-annually with faculty and staff.
— Share area-specific financial information with all areas and make area - or faculty-specific resources better known across the School.
— Encourage resource-sharing across areas where donor fund agreements allow.
• Document and share studio, ensemble, and class sizes longitudinally across at least a five-year period; and use this data to inform decision-making.
• Build and sustain a culture of grant-writing and resource-seeking for all faculty.
• Look for opportunities to link School activities/priorities with well-funded campus initiatives.
• Review all restricted gift funds for maximum flexibility of use.
• Continue robust fundraising efforts to attract major gifts and to grow and sustain relationships with alumni and donors.
• Identify and develop faculty aptitude in fundraising in strategically identified areas through vision-oriented conversations between administration, advancement, and faculty.
Promote greater understanding and transparency about faculty and staff roles and loads.
• Clarify and define functions of staff roles and establish mission-aligned priorities for use of staff time.
— Create and share faculty FAQ to reduce time and redundancy in staff responses to faculty queries.
— Expand onboarding protocols for new faculty and staff to promote a better understanding of the School’s functioning.
— Establish guidelines and protocols for ensuring smooth transitions in staff and administrative roles.
— Form a Staff Advisory Board and hold regular meetings at which staff representatives can speak openly with the administration about a broad array of School matters pertaining to their roles.
• Promote a clearer understanding of faculty loads and expectations.
— Distinguish and articulate expectations regarding research/creative activity, teaching, and service effort percentages among tenure-system, clinical, teaching, and research faculty with reference to college, campus, and NASM norms and guidelines, and with the goal of greater equity, transparency, and sustainability.
— Identify and articulate work that’s hidden or not easily identifiable as research creative activity, teaching, and service, and adjust load percentages as needed.
— Determine appointment types for new positions based on the research creative activity, teaching, and service needs of the unit that are not necessarily reliant upon historical precedent.
— Continue advocacy for specialized faculty in terms of job security, salary, and career development.
— Define faculty service obligations as they relate to mentorship, recruitment, public engagement, communications, and marketing.
SCHOOL OF MUSIC
1114 West Nevada Street
Urbana, IL 61801
music.illinois.edu
LAND ACKNOWLEDGEMENT OF THE SCHOOL OF MUSIC
We acknowledge that these spaces stand on the traditional territories of the Peoria, Kaskaskia, Piankashaw, Wea, Miami, Mascoutin, Odawa, Sauk, Mesquaki, Kickapoo, Potawatomi, Ojibwe, Menominee, Ho-Chunk, and Chickasaw Nations. These lands carry the ongoing stories of these Nations and their struggles for survival and identity. The School of Music at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign acknowledges the peoples of these lands, as well as the histories of dispossession that have allowed for the growth of this institution. We share a responsibility to reflect on and actively address these histories and the role that this university has played in shaping them. The School of Music is committed to moving beyond these acknowledgements, toward building deeper relationships and taking actions to promote equity for Indigenous peoples.