Guest Speakers
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John W. Richmond was appointed tenured Professor and Dean of the College of Music at the University of North Texas on August 1, 2016. Previously, Richmond served as Professor and Director of the Glenn Korff School of Music at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln (UNL; 2003-2016) and as Professor and in various administrative appointments in the School of Music at the University of South Florida-Tampa (USF; 1987-2003). Richmond’s research focuses on arts education policy, legal issues in arts education, and the philosophy of music education.
He is published in the Journal of Research in Music Education, Research Perspectives in Music Education, Arts Education Policy Review, the International Journal of Music Education, the Journal of Aesthetic Education, and the Choral Journal, as well as a number of research monographs, including a chapter on Paul Hindemith in On the Nature of the Musical Experience, edited by Bennett Reimer and Jeffrey E. Wright (Niwot, CO: University Press of Colorado, 1992). Richmond was a Founding Director of the Suncoast Music Education
Forum, the founding Editor of the Florida Choral News, and served as the Conference Director for the 1994 World Conference of the International Society for Music Education (ISME). Richmond edited of the Policy/Philosophy Research Section of the New Handbook of Research in Music Teaching and Learning for Oxford University Press and wrote its chapter on “Law Research and Music Education.” He also contributed a chapter on the “Policy and Sociology of Ensembles” for the Oxford Music Education Handbook, vol. 1, edited by Gary E. McPherson and Graham F. Welch, and wrote a chapter for Composing Our Future: Preparing Music Educators to Teach Composition, another Oxford University Press book edited by Michele Kaschub and Janice Smith.
Richmond performs as a choral conductor with a particular interest in chamber choir repertoire for mixed voices.
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Ryan Hourigan (2010 Indiana Music Educators Association Outstanding University Music Educator of the Year) joined the faculty at Ball State University in the fall of 2006 after nine years of teaching music at the secondary and university level. Dr. Hourigan holds degrees from Eastern Illinois University (B.M.), Michigan State University (M.M. Wind Conducting) and a Ph.D. in Music Education from The University of Michigan. Dr. Hourigan currently teaches music education and is the Associate Director of the School of Music and is the President’s Immersive Learning Fellow at Ball State University.
Currently in its fifth printing, Hourigan is the co-author (Alice Hammel) of Teaching Music to Students with Special Needs: A Label-free Approach. This is a comprehensive text written by practicing music educators, music teacher educators and researchers in the field of teaching music to children with special needs. Hourigan and Hammel’s second book Teaching Music to Students with Autism was released in the fall 2013.
In 2009, Hourigan co-founded the Prism Project (prismprojectbsu.org). This program provides an opportunity for Ball State students to gain skills in the area of teaching students with special needs. In 2013, Dr. Hourigan, along with Families Helping Families of Greater New Orleans expanded the Prism Project to the city of New Orleans and will be expanding to other cities around the United States in 2014.
Starting in 2012, Dr. Hourigan provided a series of presentations for The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. His workshop: Reaching Students with Autism Through the Arts: Implications for Inclusive Arts Classrooms is now on the National Roster of presentations through the Kennedy Center. He has since been added to the National Speaker’s Bureau for the John F. Kennedy Center.
Dr. Hourigan has been published or is in press in most of the major music education journals. His article (along with Amy Hourigan) entitled Teaching Music to Children with Autism was the most downloaded article for the Music Educators Journal for 2012.
Liz Shropshire is the founder of the Shropshire Music Foundation, which has brought free instruments and music classes to more than 15,000 war-impacted children in some of the world's fiercest conflict zones including Uganda, Northern Ireland, and Kosovo. After receiving her B.Mus. from Brigham Young University in Composition and Theory and an advanced graduate degree from the University of Southern California in Composition for the Music Industry and working in music education and composition for decades, Liz dropped everything and moved her base of operations to a refugee camp in Kosovo where she developed innovative programs using music to redress war trauma in children and teenagers. Utilizing classes taught by trained teen volunteers, the Shropshire Music Foundation continues to expand and is presently developing new programs for refugee camps around the world.