Proposal for a new degree offering
The faculty of the Music Department proposes the addition of the Bachelor of Music in Performance Degree to the Westmont College curricular offerings.
We believe that this degree will strengthen our existing curricular offerings, enhance our ability to recruit and retain talented students, and enhance the department’s ability to represent Westmont to the academy, community, church and world at large.
Rationale:
The purpose of offering the Bachelor of Music (BM) degree is to include an additional “professional degree” in music, as designated by the National Association of Schools of Music (NASM), to our catalog. There are several reasons that we are offering this degree proposal at this time including:
1.We currently offer the Bachelor of Music Education Degree that is also designated as a “professional degree.” This new degree provides a compliment and balance on the performance side of the discipline.
2. The standard and performance scope of our current program is attracting and serving the interests of current and prospective students of a high caliber of performance quality. From the burgeoning collaboration with the Theatre Department in operatic performance projects to the sophistication of the orchestral and vocal programs, students have the opportunity to develop skills appropriate to this degree offering in our current performance program.
3. We are at a competitive disadvantage in offering only the BA in music degree for students interested in performance careers. Many students perceive that schools that do not offer the BM degree do not have music program of adequate rigor or quality to prepare them for careers as professional musicians. While we work hard to dissuade them of such opinions and can point to numerous benchmarks that contradict those assumptions, we find that we frequently lose the advantage in speaking with such students. We also fail to appear in online searches for those students who are looking for a BM program, which is where many talented students begin their process of school selection. With these and others who pass us by without notice, we have no opportunity to engage the discussion. As noted in point No. 4 below, we can adapt our curriculum to offer this degree with a modest alteration of the BA in Performance Track and thus address the issue of being overlooked or summarily disregarded by students who have many choices and less than adequate time to discern the true qualitative factors involved in those choices. A list of schools that currently offer the BM in performance clearly shows the seriousness of the competitive disadvantage we currently face:
Main Competitors
(Regional and National Christian Liberal Arts Institutions)
Wheaton
Gordon
Messiah
Biola
APU
UOP
Point Loma Nazarene
Colorado Christian
Redlands
Chapman
The Master’s
California Baptist
Vanguard
La Sierra
Which includes virtually every Christian higher educational institution in our region
Representative National Liberal Arts Schools Known for Musical Excellence
St. Olaf
Hope
Gettysburg
Concordia Moorhead
Coe
Bethany
Willamette
Many of whom we have lost students to in recent years
4. We are poised to offer this degree with a strong and somewhat unique commitment to the liberal arts. While this degree, as outlined in the accompanying curricular chart, meets the NASM standards for curricular emphasis in musical performance and musicianship, it does so without sacrificing any of the Westmont General Education Requirement and with the incorporation of several interdisciplinary courses uniquely offered in our curriculum that qualify for inclusion in the NASM musicianship and performance content areas. Unlike some BM programs, such as those at Wheaton and Biola, this program makes no exception in GE requirements for students on this degree program and does not need to. The curriculum utilizes and celebrates Westmont’s commitment and approach to the liberal arts, affirming our mission to create thoughtful scholars. The inclusion of courses from a variety of academic departments that contribute to the development of the musician is a hallmark of this degree program. Among those are:
PHY 007 – Physics of Music
ART 131 – Theory and Criticism of the Arts
PEA Proposed – Body Mapping and Injury Prevention
ML Proposed – Foreign Language Diction
TA 060/160 –Theatre Production
TA 010 – Acting I
TA – Acting the Song
Serving Society Internship
5. We believe that this offering will be a net-gain for the college financially in several ways. Primarily we believe that this offering will enhance our ability to recruit and retain music majors. If we can add even 2 to 4 students to our incoming class annually to contribute to full enrollment on campus, we would more than offset the cost of offering the four proposed low-credit unit courses. Further, the loss of just a few students who might seek to transfer from Westmont to BM degree programs would provide similar revenue advantages. The issue of transferring has been one that the department has had to deal with in recent years as highly talented students become aware of the nuances of degree offerings in the field during their time at Westmont. It is well known that the quality of our students attracts both more students and donors to the college. The students in this degree program will be performance leaders in our program. They will shine and they will help their BA and non-major peers to shine more brightly as well. Additionally, the addition of even a small number of music majors to our community of students will help populate upper division music courses that at times experience low enrollment.
6. This degree program provides a concluding compliment to the continuum of degree offerings offered by the department. Over the past six years the music department has significantly revised its curricular offerings, adding degree programs in Worship Leadership and Music Education, focusing the tracks on the BA in Performance degree, and adding course offerings to meet the needs of individual performance areas such as piano literature and pedagogy. The new courses proposed in conjunction with this degree proposal complete the gaps in performance area specific offerings for vocalists and orchestral instrumentalists. The BM degree offers our students the full range of intensity in degree choices from the general BA in music to the BA with performance emphasis to the BM in performance. Students will be able to move between these programs as they ascertain their personal and career goals during their time at Westmont.
7.This degree strengthens interdisciplinary collaboration for both our
students and our faculty. The overlaps in instructional offerings with the Modern Language Department, the Theatre Department, the Kinesiology Department and the Physics Department are treasured strengths that will bring faculty into dialogue and nurture students in their growth of understanding the inter-relatedness of their performance pursuits to the physical world and the academic discipline of their craft. This degree helps deepen the commitment between the performing arts faculties of the Theatre and Music departments, both for vocalists and instrumentalists.
8. This proposal is ideally timed to coincide with our regular NASM accreditation review (typically every 10 years). Submitting it with that process in the 2018-2019 school year will create a significant efficiency in administrative efforts.The timeline for consideration of this degree will include the normal process of approval by the Westmont Academic Senate, Faculty, Administration and Board of Trustees simultaneously with approval process of NASM. The NASM process will begin with the inclusion of this degree proposal in our Self-Study that will be submitted in November of 2018 for consideration by the NASM accreditation board in June of 2019. We would anticipate some procedural or program detail questions from NASM that might then be addressed at the NASM accreditation board’s November 2019 meeting. If all proceeds apace with both NASM and Westmont procedures, we could be well positioned to include this degree in the 2020-2021 Westmont catalog.
The Music Department has been pleased to collaborate with department of Theatre, Kinesiology, Foreign Language and Physics in the development of this proposal and deeply appreciates the support of the Office the Provost and the assistance of the Office of the Registrar as well. We look forward to the endorsement of the Academic Senate and proceeding through the approval processes that follow.