Department of Music students Gustavo Samudio and Donna Vickers have been selected for the Technology Institute for Music Educators (TI:ME) Music Technology Leadership Academy. The selection process is highly competitive and only some 15 students from around the country are chosen to participate each year. Samudio is a native of Panama and is a junior music education major. Vickers is a senior music education major from New York. 

Gustavo and Donna will be attending the TI:ME National Conference Feb. 1-4, 2017, in Cleveland. There, they will attend eight leadership academy sessions (Wednesday through Saturday) focusing on developing strategies for utilizing technology to reach non-traditional music students and to attend other sessions and program activities throughout the conference related to this work. 

The Music Technology Leadership Academy is designed to provide a highly select group of music education students the opportunity to immerse themselves in studying instructional strategies for using music technology to reach students in secondary schools who are non-participants in traditional music ensembles. The strategy and philosophy of this initiative is aligned with the website musiccreativity.org and its focus on using technology to reach "The Other 80%" in secondary school music.

Samudio and Vickers join only a handful of select music education majors from around the country in this prestigious workshop. Past participants have come from Arizona State University, University of Massachussetts-Amherst, New York University, Ithaca College, and the University of Cincinatti, among others. Samudio and Vickers are the first University of Arkansas students to represent our university.