Music Education

Prepare to lead the band, the chorus or the orchestra with a BS degree in Music Education

If you are ready to take up the baton, SC State is the right place for you. Our Music Program offers the Bachelor of Science in Music Education to prepare students for classrooms in South Carolina and beyond.

The Music Education Program’s mission is to provide you with educational and performance experiences that cultivate creativity, develop performance proficiency and enhance scholarly potential.

By the Numbers

You can focus your work on one of three concentrations:

• Instrumental (Band, Orchestra, or Electric Strings)
• Choral-Voice
• Choral-Piano

Scholarship opportunities are available to students within the university band and/or choir as a part of the music program.

Music Education majors are provided with educational and performance experiences that cultivate developmentally, appropriate pedagogical skills, grades PK – 12; creativity; performance proficiency; and intellectual capacity in a multifaceted, global society.

Music education majors acquire skills whereby they teach to inspire, influence, and change while working with early childhood students, elementary students, middle school students, and high school students.

Pedagogical skills are acquired by developing and implementing instructional lessons for general music, choir, and band via pre-clinical experiences and finally via 12 – 13 weeks of professional clinical experiences.

As a result, many of our music education graduates become general music educators, chorus, and band directors. Many of them have branched into to such areas as music department chairs, collegiate choral directors, music supervisors, music program coordinators, professional jazz artists, principles, and military officers.

On average, those who want advanced degrees will work 3-5 years before attending graduate school.

Apply Today to SC State!

What Our Music Programs Do For Our Graduates

• We produce musicians who demonstrate, by means of appropriate evaluative criteria, effective manipulative and organizational skills in the use of music techniques and materials emphasizing the expressive content and communicative qualities of high- level artistic processes.
• We also produce music educators who continue to enhance the cultural, aesthetic, artistic, and educational life of the local, regional, national, and international communities.
• We provide majors with basic and advanced career skills, techniques, pedagogical concepts, and insights as performing artists, commercial music industry professionals, early childhood, elementary and secondary school teachers.
• Our students interpret, create, and maintain the highest level in individual and group performances.
• We prepare our majors for graduate study in varied areas of the music discipline.
• We produce artists who are innovators, critical thinkers, risk takers, and who are willing accept challenges and experiment with new ideas and new methods.

SC State’s Music Programs are accredited by the National Association of Schools of Music (NASM).

Get Ready for Your Audition

Students pursuing a degree in music are required to complete an audition for acceptance into their desired music specialization area. This audition process is separate from those held for the SC State choral and instrumental groups.
Students must exhibit demonstrated potential for a successful career in Music Industry through basic proficiency on their chosen instrument and provide verification of solo or ensemble experience. Additionally, a diagnostic theory entrance examination is given for placement into the proper theory class.

Why SC State is Unmatched in Music

• A Grammy Group Winner (trombone).
• A Grammy-nominated Jazz recording artist.
• Music Education Research agenda comprising linking music and literacy, music instruction, music aptitudes, and music achievement.
• Band and Choral student performances regionally and nationally.
• Student Chamber ensembles generated from studio classes.
• The Fine Arts Building is a modern, 21st-century facility with a Recital Hall and Courtyard for performances.
• Only public Historical Black University in South Carolina.
• Centrally located between Columbia and Charleston.

What to Expect in Music Education

• Student portfolios are developed in music education courses.
• Student arrangements of choral and band repertoire
• Students complete a Senior Recital.
• Weekly Recital Hour performances.
• Students develop a music philosophy that is implemented during lesson planning.
• Students participate in pre-clinical experiences for teaching and learning starting at the freshman year.

You’ll learn by doing

• Music Education majors participate in a developed Music Education Candidates Constructing Learning (MECCL) Program
• PK–12 music class observations
• PK-12 hands-on-learning in general music, choral conducting, and instrumental conducting experiences
• PK-12 student music learning objective planning and assessing.
• Parental music learning ‘informances’ planning
• 13-week professional clinical experience.

Campus Organizations in Music

• Collegiate National Association for Music Education (NAfME)
• Sigma Alpha Iota Music Fraternity for Women
• Kappa Kappa Psi Music Fraternity for Men

Testimonials

Costonzo Bryant-Martin graduated in 2016 with a B. S. in Instrumental Music Education. As a current band educator in Columbia, SC, Mr. Bryant-Martin has received a M.M. degree and a M.Ed. degree. Mr. Bryant-Martin shared that “he was prepared when he started teaching due to the teaching foundation he received in the music education program of the Visual and Performing Arts Department at SC State University.” He currently working on a doctorate degree.

Eganam Segbefia graduated in 2015 with a B.S. in Instrumental Music Education. In 2018, he received a M.M. in performance from the Manhattan School of Music. Mr. Segbefia shared with faculty and students, upon his return to SCSU for a lecture-performance presentation, that he had received a strong foundation from SCSU to attend graduate school at the Manhattan School of Music in NY.