The fourth bi-annual Music Education Summer Symposium is scheduled July 28 to Aug. 1 from 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. on the NDSU campus. The symposium is a weeklong event for music teachers nationwide to come together, learn from each other and from the experts.

"It is a fun, immersive week," said Charlette Moe, assistant director of choral activities. "You live and breathe all of the instructors' information."

A total of 40 participants and 20 presenters will travel from Colorado, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Oklahoma, Minnesota, Iowa and Florida to be a part of the symposium.

Participants are able to customize their learning experience with a selection of sessions from three different tracks: instrumental, choral and elementary music.

Session titles include:

• “Musical Microworlds: Solve It, Build It, Do It” with Deborah Confredo
• “What's so Wicked about ‘Wicked’ (and ‘Glee’)” with Alice-Ann Darrow
• “Time is on Your Side,” with Tim Sharp
• “Boys Make Noise … or … Real Men Sing: Boys in the Choral/General Music Program” with Kevin Meidl

Guest speakers include:

• Alice-Ann Darrow is the Irvin Cooper professor of music therapy and music education at Florida State University. Her teaching and research interests are teaching music to special populations and the role of music in deaf culture. She is editor of the text “Introduction to Approaches in Music Therapy,” and co-author of “Music in Special Education.”
• Kevin Meidl is a director of choirs and music department chair at Appleton West High School, Appleton, Wisconsin. He is the principle conductor and artistic director with the Appleton Boy Choir and the founding conductor of the Badger State Girl Choir based in Neenah, Wisconsin. He has conducted choirs for the official ceremonies commemorating the 50th anniversary of D-Day in Normandy, France; for Pope John Paul II in Rome; and for 30 other countries around the world.
• Tim Sharp is the executive director of the American Choral Directors Association and artistic director of the Tulsa Oratorio Chorus, Tulsa, Oklahoma. Before joining the association, Sharp was dean of fine arts at Rhodes College, Memphis, where he conducted the Rhodes Singers and MasterSingers Chorale.         
• Deborah Confredo is professor of music education in the Boyer College of Music and Dance at Temple University in Philadelphia. She is an instrumental editor and consultant for the FJH Music Company. While in Illinois, she wrote the research synthesis column for the “Illinois Music Educator” and chaired the Illinois Music Educators Association Research Committee.

Students participating in the symposium earn three-credit hours toward either NDSU's blended-learning Master of Music in Music Education degree or professional development graduate credit.

For more information on the 2016 NDSU Music Education Summer Symposium or earning a degree in Master of Music in Music Education, contact Charlette Moe at charlette.moe@ndsu.edu or NDSU's Office of Distance and Continuing Education at 1-800-726-1724 or 701-231-7015.

NDSU is recognized as one of the nation's top 108 public and private universities by the Carnegie Commission on Higher Education.