Adrienne Rodriguez is the new coordinator of music education. She teaches courses in music education, supervises student teachers and oversees the music education degree program. She is currently a Ph.D. candidate at Michigan State University. While at Michigan State, Adrienne was a graduate assistant for music education, a graduate teaching and learning fellow for the Residential College of Arts and Sciences, and taught undergraduate courses in early childhood music methods and classroom music for elementary education students. She also assisted with numerous music education courses, taught early childhood music classes at the MSU Community Music School, acted as the advisor for the collegiate chapter of the National Association for Music Education and supervised student teachers. Her doctoral dissertation explores parental experiences and learning in the context of early childhood music classes and the relationship between participation in early childhood music classes and the musical experiences parents provide for their children in their homes.

Rodriguez is an active clinician and researcher. She has presented workshops and sessions for both pre- and in-service music educators at several colleges as well as local, state and regional music education conferences. Her research interests include musical parenting, parent experiences in the context of early childhood music classes, as well as popular and vernacular music education. She has presented her research at regional, national and international research conferences including the Society for Music Teacher Education (SMTE) Conference, the NAfME Music Research National Conference and the International Society for Music Education (ISME) Conference. She recently published a research article entitledParents’ perceptions of early childhood music participation(2019) in the International Journal of Community Music. Her co-authored articleSeizing the “both/and” moment: A response to Randall Allsup’s Remixing the Classroomwas published in 2017 in Action, Criticism, and Theory for Music Education.

Prior to beginning her doctoral studies, Rodriguez was an elementary music teacher in Hillsborough County, Florida. During her time in Florida, she also taught early childhood music classes for parents and children from birth to age five, as well as private music lessons in guitar, voice and piano. She holds degrees in music education from The Eastman School of Music and the University of Miami.