Public engagement, innovative teaching and a resourceful approach to challenges
“We want to manifest our vision for beginning the next 100 years, while continuing to observe the core values and great history of music for community, music for the workforce, and music for enriching lives that have become part of our DNA,” says Dean Tayloe Harding.
The school’s Vision 2030 focuses on the aspiration to be a national leader in modeling the joys of a musical life demonstrated by a commitment to musical and academic excellence, artistic independence and collaboration, curiosity and exploration, mentorship and leadership, and service and community.
The School of Music is an essential contributor to the musical life of the university and the Midlands, and we fulfill this not only by preparing our students to be skilled music leaders but also through robust community engagement programs.
— Dean Tayloe Harding
“The School of Music is an essential contributor to the musical life of the university and the Midlands, and we fulfill this not only by preparing our students to be skilled music leaders but also through robust community engagement programs,” Harding says.
The Public Music Initiative is one of the pillars of music leadership outlined in Vision 2030. The School of Music will continue to broaden its musical and joyful impact by advancing its sophisticated academic music instruction and presentation activities through community engagement, music education and a comprehensive understanding of what it means to make music for a living. The Public Music Initiative encourages connections to music as part of our everyday routine as citizens by integrating activities to enhance the quality of life on campus and in the community by offering accessible and affordable opportunities for music enrichment.
“Our goal for the next 100 years is to become indispensable to the public by building on our national reputation as a leader in identifying, meeting, and leading community needs for music and the joy fulfilling those needs brings to all,” Harding says.
In addition to presenting more than 300 concerts and recitals a year, faculty, staff, students and alumni coordinate workshops, classes, camps, lessons and clinics featuring music listening, music learning, and music making experiences for all age groups and skill levels, as well as people with special needs, and incarcerated, marginalized and homeless populations.
Other Public Music Initiative programs, collectively called “Music for Your Life,” include the USC String Project, Children’s Music Development Center, Congaree New Horizons Band, an Armed Services Veterans Band, and Carolina Lifesong Initiative. Plans include reviving the USC Youth Choir and a children’s program at Richland Library called “Plink, Rattle and Toot.”
“Our faculty and students have built these distinctive programs that have become incorporated into their daily work and their regular academic activity, so even as they pursue degrees in music and their professional ambitions, they are also making a difference in the community,” Harding says.
The future of music education
Music education, an integral historic component of the school, is seminal to the Public Music Initiative. As it builds for the future, the School of Music will update its progressive and signature degree programs at the undergraduate, master’s and doctorate levels.
“While music education degrees are designed primarily to prepare individuals to be school music teachers – or, in the case of the graduate programs, to provide professional development to existing teachers and research discoveries for future university educators – we’re committed to thinking about the way music is taught and learned more broadly through unique programs and degree offerings,” Harding says.
Among the paths undergraduates can choose is a concentration designed for Bachelor of Music in performance students who are not majoring in music education. Twelve hours of instruction gives them pedagogical training to develop themselves as music teaching artists.
The school also has invested in highly respected graduate programs in piano pedagogy and violin/viola pedagogy whose goals are to produce musicians who are skilled teachers in individual or small group settings.
“Most master’s level music degrees focus on performance, but USC’s master’s program in violin/viola pedagogy offers young pre-professional string players an opportunity to focus primarily on the how their instrument is taught,” says professor Ari Streisfeld. “The degree has produced many graduates who have gone on to become some of the top string teachers in the region.”
As for the schools’ renowned graduate programs in piano pedagogy, its internationally respected coordinator and Carolina Distinguished Professor Scott Price adds, “I believe that one of the strengths of our programs is the dedication of our students and faculty which reflects the remarkable depth of the mission of the School of Music. Certainly, we wish for our students of all ages to become self-sufficient, and to read and count music well, attain proficiency in execution at their instruments, and that they be able to express themselves artistically. While that is true of many programs, what I observe again and again and is special to our school is the very deep commitment of our students to using their music and their pedagogy as tools to reach the person - to recognize that person, validate them, and help them fulfill their potential in music as means to support life development.”
To fill the continuum between school music classroom/ensemble teaching and independent and private music lesson instruction as well as critical gaps in arts education, a three-year pilot program has been launched to expand music learning opportunities in South Carolina. This groundbreaking initiative, the Music Teaching Artist Certificate Program (MTAC), addresses South Carolina’s music teacher shortage, particularly in rural areas, by providing professional development and advocacy skills for teaching artists to provide music enrichment in their communities.
While other schools offer similar certificates, the depth and breadth of USC’s curriculum, developed and delivered by its renowned music education faculty members, could serve as a model for institutions across the country. In 2025-26, Harding, leadership professor-of-practice and MTAC Director Mary Luehrsen, and Assistant Professor of Oboe, Coordinator of Teaching Artistry, and MTAC Associate Director Hassan Anderson will be delivering lectures and participating in panel discussions around the country presenting the structure and details of USC’s program.
Separate from the USC undergraduate or graduate admissions process, the accelerated, one-semester micro-credential curriculum program is offered through one of the School’s Music For Your Life entities – the Carolina Music Studios – and is tailored to meet the specific needs and interests of each participant, providing a flexible and supportive learning environment with the opportunity to complete a capstone project. The Gretsch family and its foundation offered full scholarships to the 12 participants in the program’s pilot Spring 2025 cohort, ranging from experienced private and classroom teachers to professional musicians.
Collin Danker, owner of Freeway Music Lexington, says he was drawn to the program for the opportunity to learn new teaching techniques to become a better educator. As a drummer, he also was excited about the Gretsch family’s involvement. Through the program, he had the opportunity to attend the S.C. Music Educators Association Professional Development Conference and Modern Band Summit for the first time, participate in educational seminars – for new ideas and reinforcement of his current methods – and network with other educators locally and nationally.
“My plan is to implement what I’ve learned into my curriculum and help our instructors benefit as well to make our business a better learning institution,” Danker says. “Certified teachers are leaving the profession in alarming numbers, and arts programs are being cut. I feel the MTAC program can help to fill the void that’s being created with this current shift.”
Danker hopes more local musicians and educators participate in the MTAC program to become better music teaching artists and music teachers and to help more people in their communities learn to play via camps, churches, schools and other opportunities. As his capstone project, he and two other members of the cohort are planning a musical summer camp in conjunction with the School of Music professor and MTAC mentor, Wendy Valerio.
For Letriah Obanor who moved to South Carolina from New England, the MTAC program offered an opportunity to deepen her roots and become a greater asset to her new community. As an entrepreneur, performing artist and contract instructor, Obanor says the tailored program restored her excitement, creativity and joy in teaching the arts.
“I learned that there is a greater world around me, supporting me in the field that I was taught to believe was an undesirable path. I didn’t feel alone in my pursuits anymore,” she says. “I felt encouraged to learn more and become more thanks to the SCMEA Professional Development Conference. It broadened my horizons.”
Obanor says she gained an abundance of fresh ideas, techniques and methods that she will use to teach with greater energy and purpose to achieve higher standards for her students.
“The relationships and networking experience alone was worth the five-month journey,” she says. “MTAC was a bridge to new faces and places. Now I hope to build a bridge to my community, and I actually did through my capstone project.”
Obanor’s project was an eight-day summer camp called “Marion’s Got Talent,” sponsored by South Carolina Arts Commission and the Auntie Karen Foundation. The camp, for ages 5-12, included singing, choreography, talent acts, daily art lessons and a cultural immersion experience to learn a West African song, dance and drum finale.
Obanor calls music the universal language and believes it “is essential to growth, development and social behaviors.” She adds, “It cuts through biases and separating lines. It broadens our horizons, creates a platform for listening, and can open doors to closed minds.”
Music leadership, partnerships and new opportunities for research and study
As the School of Music defines and pursues its future, the focus will continue to be not only on innovative programs such as Music Teaching Artist Certificate but also a resourceful approach to the artistic and financial challenges presented by the economies of the future.
The school’s Bachelor of Arts, Musical Theatre concentration, and Bachelor of Science, Music Industry Studies, (MIS) major programs (both born in 2021) manifest the school’s advancing commitment to preparing the musical workforce for South Carolina and beyond. The programs provide learning occasions for students to study aspects of the 21st century music economies, possibilities for their role in building and sustaining it, and then leading the efforts that identify what it will become and the influence it can have. The music industry program is expanding with new tracks in audio recording, live promotion, and record label management, all identified through a comprehensive study conducted by MIS faculty of both market and societal need for music-related skills in the music and entertainment marketplaces, as well as assessing current and potential student demand.
Chief examples of the efforts to better prepare students for tomorrow’s musical marketplace are a handful of recently developed opportunities for students to assume comprehensive responsibility for whole School of Music initiatives, start-to-finish, such as the university’s unique student-run record label Greene Street Records. A student management team not only selects artists, supervises the making of recordings and promotional gigs, works with a national distribution partner, markets the entire recurring entity, and manages a significant annual budget, they also serve as mentors in a required, for-credit course to train the next class of label managers.
This project is a partnership between the University of South Carolina School of Music’s Music Industry Studies program; the College of Hospitality, Retail and Sport Management; and Greater Than Distribution (part of Virgin/Universal Music Group).
“Because of the strength of the Bachelor of Science degree in Music Industry Studies, we’ve added new tracks to allow students to choose a concentration,” Harding says. “The track in record label management with our in-house label, Greene Street Records, distinguishes our program.”
Innovative initiatives throughout the School of Music capture the energy and vision for the future. Performance and ensemble faculty have worked hard advising excelling students to create dynamic endeavors that demand student management and leadership. These include the nationally recognized Ears Wide Open, a concert series designed, curated, produced, marketed, presented, and performed by students for students on campus to help bring diverse musics to diverse audiences. A management team of graduate performance and jazz majors, as well as undergraduates from the MIS program, present music performed by student groups from every area of the school in four to five events a year in unique venues all over the USC campus. These, as well as any number of other contemporary music ensembles where the pursuit of music entrepreneurship, progressive programming and marketing, and distinctive audience-development goals are emphasized, are permanent features of a school looking toward the future of music.
Another initiative, “SPARK: Music Leadership at Carolina,” the nation’s most comprehensive music leadership institute, has since 2007 supplemented a traditional music school experience by preparing musicians for vibrant and sustainable futures through curricular and co-curricular study. Through initiatives that foster creative learning and personal exploration, students learn effective health and wellness strategies, community engagement, and entrepreneurship and music advocacy skills to lead into the future and broaden and enrich the reach of arts in our society. This leadership training will continue to evolve with civic change to prepare students to be music leaders in the communities where they choose to live.
“In addition to the more conventional professions associated with music economies represented by SPARK, MIS, Music Theatre, and the historic music degree programs of the past 100 years re-energized for the next 100 – including performance, conducting, composition, jazz, music theory, and musicology – the School of Music is investing in a research lab on artificial intelligence,” Harding says. “A new faculty member, Emily Schwitzgebel, started this fall to research how music making and music learning can be influenced or advanced by artificial intelligence and how it impacts students.”
While the school has forged partnerships with many local, state, regional and national organizations on behalf of the potential of music study and music making, none has had more impact on the school or its communities in the present and for the future than the merger of USC’s Koger Center of the Arts into the School of Music in 2018. The impact has been profound, presenting students and faculty with new opportunities to both make more music for more people and to lead more musical activities citywide. A unique programming and visionary bond has developed between the two arts giants of Columbia, and the University of South Carolina and all its constituents are gaining great cultural benefit as a result.
As the second century of music begins at Carolina, the School of Music, the art’s greatest home and champion, is at the center of delivering for all not only what it means to be a musician, but also what it means to be affected by music, in all the ways that it can and does shape us. At Carolina, it will never be any other way. It never was.