COMTEP Special Message
Dear COMTEP Members,
On the previous page, you will find the Call for Papers for NYSSMA Winter Conference, 1996. After observing the creative and scholarly work of my colleagues and our students over the past few years, I feel the time has come for New York State to highlight its own research activity, in a professional, yet confortable and accessible setting. Certainly we have all learned much from clinics on research at past NYSSMA conferences, but at times we have bemoaned that fact that it seems to be mostly "higher ed types" in attendance. by having a research portfolio session, I hope we might accomplish the following:

  • NYSSMA members who do not generally attend an entire session on one research topic would be free to circulate and sample the smorgasbord of current research while also saying hello to old friends and colleagues, former students, or even searching out prospective graduate programs. Anyone wishing more in-depth discussion on a particular topic coulc always continue discussion in the dining room, etc.
  • Graduate students woul have a challenging but supportive environment in which to present some of their first research projects.
  • Undergraduate students would be able to see the fruits of other student's labor, and would also be able to survey prospective graduate programs.
  • Teachers in the schools would have a professional venue to disseminate their scholarly projects, which might represent action research or might have grown out of their own graduate studies. Perhpas presenting their work will even help them get funding to come to the conference .
  • Finally, what a nice way to disseminate some of your own scholarly work...maybe you have that project that you never got around to sending off to a journal, or maybe just finished a project documenting your students' progress for you administration. While we discuss with each other many elements of higher education (such as our teaching loads, our recent change of administration, the ebb and flow of budgets), it seems we do not always take the chance to listen to each other's creative forays.
  • From these presentations, I hope to identify topics and authors for future research articles in the School Music News.

    To conclude, the submission does not have to be a finished product (yet), just an abstract delineating the project. That gives you (or your students) all summer to actually do the work. I would appreciate your passing this information on to your students, and please do not forget those students who did excellent class projects, theses, or dissertations over the last few years. Unless these have been published already in a journal or presented at national MENC in Kansas City, they would be suitable for presentation at NYSSMA.

    Ruth Brittin