Maud Hickey is associate professor and coordinator of the music education program. Hickey’s research interest lies in the teaching of, as well as assessment of, musical creativity as manifest through improvisation and composition. She is a six-year recipient of a $50,000 grant from the Chicago Community Trust to work with juveniles in the Cook County Juvenile Detention Center on music composition projects. Her book Music Outside the Lines: Ideas for Composing Music in K-12 Classrooms was published by Oxford University Press (2012). She is the author of chapters in several books and articles in journals such as in Music Educators Journal, General Music Today, Journal of Research in Music Education, and Research Studies in Music Education. Hickey has been invited to present her work at several state, regional, national and international conferences. She currently serves as a member of the Society for Research in Music Education Executive Committee, and on the professional development committee of The College Music Society. In 2012, she was appointed a member of the inaugural cohort of Faculty Fellows for Northwestern’s Center for Civic Engagement and is a member of the Northwestern University 2015-16 Public Voices Fellowship program. Previous to work at the University level, Dr. Hickey was a public school band director.