Steinhardt Music Educators of NYU, a club dedicated to music and music education advocacy through professional development, networking and community outreach, will hold their second annual music educators’ mixer next Friday.
The mixer will be a chance for music educators from around the city to network and talk about the direction of music education in New York City.
Steinhardt junior and SMENYU Community Outreach Coordinator Jamie Ehrenfeld said that the event drew over 100 students and educators last year. This year, Ehrenfeld said SMENYU is trying to reach out to the greater New York community.
She said the club’s mission is to promote music education within NYU. Ehrenfeld also said this is the first year the club and its events are open to non-music education majors.
“Our programs are aimed to help not only the people who are going to be music teachers, but people who have music education as a part of their life and want to do more with it,” Ehrenfeld said.
Carla Jenny Friend, the club’s program coordinator, has a master’s degree in music education from the Steinhardt School of Culture, Education and Human Development. She said SMENYU offers students opportunities they may not have in class.
“We have the power to offer what students feel like they might not be getting enough of, something that they are interested in or something that might not be included in the program,” Friend said. “We can provide them with those experiences, workshops and opportunities to network with other music education students and music teachers from the area.”
SMENYU has put on an event called Concert for Cause every semester since it started two years ago.
The event started as a small concert in a classroom at NYU to raise awareness for the organization Autism Speaks. Since then, the club has raised money and awareness with three full-scale concerts for several other causes like the American Cancer Society and the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation.
While the club’s activity in the fall semesters concentrates on these benefit concerts, SMENYU focuses more strongly on music in the spring.
The club has a diverse membership, including teachers from music schools, public schools and private schools in addition to students from different colleges who are looking to become music teachers.
Despite the diversity in backgrounds, Friend said the members have shared goals and advocate for identical causes.
“The group consists of all different types of music educators trying to come together for networking reasons and to get to know each other,” Friend said. “It’s important that we all know who we are working with and that we are working for the same cause.”
Su Sie Park is a contributing writer. Email her at [email protected]