CMS was one of seven professional societies (others represented the disciplines of Chemistry, Communications, History, Mathematics, Psychology, and Sociology) invited to participate in a recent Carnegie Academy for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (CASTL) Colloquium in Washington, D.C. The theme of the Colloquium was Collaborating for Change. When Executive Director Robby D. Gunstream and I thought about how CMS uses its resources to promote change, we realized that, as the number of services and activities of the Society expands, it is ever more of a challenge to characterize its nature succinctly, especially to those in the higher education community outside of music. A further challenge was to represent this perspective on the Societys mission graphically, as a poster.
The resulting poster was well received in Washington. An accompanying sheet of examples provided during the poster session shows four paths through the graphic. Based on the premise that the Society can best effect change by providing opportunities for its individual members to grow and change, each example begins with a member focusing on one of several possible professional domains, with any number of CMS organizational structures, and by coming together either over a period of time or simultaneously to stimulate thinking. The four paths are described below.
A CMS member focusing on Curricular Perspectives may be affected by a CMS Report on Assessing the Undergraduate Curriculum and several summer Workshops on Music Theory and Aural Skills, two Leadership Institutes for Curricular innovation in Higher Education, and a series of Essays in the Newsletter.
A member focusing on Career Development may be affected by a CMS Report of a Task Force on the welfare of full- and part-time non-tenure track faculty, discussions of the theme at all ten regional CMS Chapter meetings, and finally a panel at the Annual Meeting.
A member focusing on the cross-disciplinary Issues of Gender may be affected by articles in the CMS Symposium on women in the music academy, a CMS Report, Womens Studies/Womens Status, and three summer Institutes dealing with, among other issues, the integration of music by women composers into the undergraduate curriculum.
A member focusing on the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning may be affected by outreach efforts toward CASTL and the American Association for Higher Education (AAHE), the introduction of CASTL Scholars at the International Meeting in Limerick, Ireland, and a series of articles in the Newsletter on Peer Review of Teaching.
You may construct your own path. Start at the center, pick a professional area, and then look outside the circle for those components of the Society that might come into play. This model of CMS in action is of course a work in progress, and we welcome your comments and suggestions.
What have we left out? What organizational structures have you depended on to stimulate your thinking in some domain of professional interest? Have you made as full use as you might of the opportunities the Societys existing structures offer for your own development and change?