Alyssa Camejo ~ Assistant Editor
To kick off the latter half of Women’s History Month, the Critograph will be looking at women who have an impact on our campus at the University of Lynchburg.
This week we feature Dr. Kara Eaton Dean, an Associate Professor of Music who holds a Bachelors of Music and a Masters in Music from University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She also holds a PhD in Music Education from New York University.
Dean, who is celebrating her 11th year at the University said, “I was fortunate to have several professors of different genders, ethnicities, backgrounds, and specialties who helped shape my graduate studies and who were perhaps already doing some of the work of pushing against boundaries for young women in academia. For me, my graduate school experience included a mixture of students so I certainly wasn’t the only female student.”
Monica Chisom, a junior Vocal Music Education major said, “Dr. Dean always does her best to help us with differentiation and gendered terms in education. Music is a discipline where sometimes gender does matter, and having a female professor who can demonstrate singing techniques for other female singers can be helpful in the same way it works for males.”
Academia is generally a male dominated field, but more women are in the field of music education. At University of Lynchburg, music education is valued equally with performance, which is not the common practice.
Dean said, “Academia is changing. There are certainly fields that are male-dominated but I don’t believe music education is one of them. I have heard of faculty members in other universities who think music theory or musicology or performance are superior to music education but that certainly isn’t the case here at the University of Lynchburg. Our music department includes some wonderful people – both staff and faculty – who care about creating a quality experience for our student musicians.”
The environment at the University of Lynchburg has been integral to Dean’s success.
She said, “I am nurtured through the loving support and encouragement of a network of badass women staff and faculty members here at University of Lynchburg. This University wouldn’t be what it is without them and I am privileged to know and work with them. I cannot wait to see the positive changes that occur here at the University of Lynchburg in the next few years.”
