NEWS: University Updates April 2015 |

Arizona State University

The music therapy department at Arizona State University has been busy conducting research, giving presentations, engaging the community, and honoring the program director, Barbara Crowe, as she prepares for retirement. Recent research initiatives taken by students and faculty include designing a sing-along app for dementia clients, studying memory loss with a focus on music and quality of life, creating a community MT program for breaking down cultural barriers, and researching relapse prevention methods for use in MT. Two recent ASU grads presented at the 2015 WRAMTA conference on topics of MT with LGBTQ adolescents and survey results pertaining to MT and autism. The ASU MT department continues to reach out to the community by participating in events like the Azure Concert (Tetra String Quartet concert for autism families), hosting the Rainbow Connection Choir (for young adults on and off the autism spectrum), providing a drum circle during the Mental Health Awareness Week on campus, and continuing a thriving guitars for vets group. Lastly, we are sad to see Prof. Barbra Crowe, who recently received the service award at WRAMTA conference, retire from the music therapy department at ASU, but we are thankful for her guidance and wisdom through the years.

Again, there were 5 current students from ASU who attended WRAMTA conference.

Marylhurt University
In our Music Therapy Program this year, we were able to get funds for scholarships for conference.We attended Hill Day to support HB 2796 for State Licensure. Many students and MT-BC’s met with legislators to ask for support of our bill and answer any questions.Our student organization is co-hosting a screening and discussion forum of the documentary, Alive Inside. We will be showing the documentary and following it with a panel discussion and question and answer session. Our Masters program starts this fall, and we are looking forward to that!
We had 4 students attend regional conference this year!

Seattle Pacific University

Our MT program started an Intergenerational Group/weekly session at Bayview Retirement Community, along with our newly started 1-on-1 sessions, with older adults from the memory care unit at Bayview and elementary age students from a local elementary school. We are also starting training sessions to work with homeless youth at New Horizons. The New Horizons staff does a monthly training session that is required of all volunteers to learn how to deal with certain situations that may arise within the facility. During the last week in June is our annual EMP Music Therapy camp for children on the Autism spectrum or with other developmental disabilities, ages 6-14 (morning and afternoon sessions).SPU students attended regional conference, their names are as follows: Mikeala Henderson, Dan Diaz, Colby Cumine, Riley Kua, Noelle Ciaciuch and Marissa Renella.

Utah State University

At USU, we recently hosted a “music therapy passport” experience. We created mini passports to encourage students to go to each station. If they got a signature at each station, then they could turn in their “passport” for a cookie. At each station we had a different types of music therapy interventions. The stations included a bell chart to Cold Plays “Clocks”, a relaxation station, an improvisation station with djembes, tubano drums, and an assortment of rhythmic instruments, and then the last station was an intervention that involved playing guitars in open D tuning by following a chart. The event was a huge success, and we introduced music therapy to not only our student body but a lot of different community members as well.

We had eight students from Utah State attend WRAMTA in San Jose.