My name is Eric Honor.

I'm currently the chair of the School .. here at University of Central Missouri.

Interviewed right around now in 2000 and then started working in August and was, you know, the only music technology professor here until about 2010.

They hired me in 2000 here at UCM to create a degree program in music technology, and I've basically spent 24 years doing that and building the program I wish had been there when I graduated from high school.

And so within my school we have three divisions, which are the Division of Art and design, the Division of Music and the Division of Theater and Dance.

The perennial powerhouse of music.

Here is the music education program.

We've been training teachers actually since the year the institution was founded.

So more than 150 years ago now that we've been doing music educator training, of course we have the degree program .. and commercial music, which is the one that I started.

We offer a bachelor's degree in performance.

We also offer a Bachelor of Arts in music, which is again much more flexible.

One thing that's unique about our school, compared to really almost any other academic unit on campus, is that in addition to being a university academic institution, we also are a public facing arts presenter and arts creator.

And that is a big part of my role, as well as to make sure that we're managing both of those jobs well.

Culty here are really deeply committed to meeting every single student where they are and being open to what that student can do, and then working with them very closely and very creatively to develop that student over time to be the best, whatever it is they want to be.

We've got to be a student right now is really interested in composing for musical theater, and so he's using that degree to take some classes in music and also some classes in theater, and kind of put those all together.

We do also in each of the divisions of my school, we have a course or a couple of courses that are specifically designed to help artists learn how to position themselves in terms of business, right?

So they learn about how do you develop your brand, how do you build a website, how do you make a press kit?

How do you, you know, do all the diffe.. that are going to be expected post-graduation to both work with media and to work with others in business?

You know, we try t.. help them hit the ground running when they graduate.

This program competes nationally like this is there are people all over, actually all over the world who know about this, this program.

And that's something I'm really proud of.

You know that here in little tiny Warrensburg, we have a music technology program that, you know, we're competing with major institutions in Nashville and Denver and Chicago and on both coasts.

I mean, I'm just blown away by what our students do, you know, and what they've gone on to do.

In the.

I came to the program with my own predisposed notions about what music technology should be, and I very intentionally from the beginning to find it very broadly.

And I basically said anything that we choose to perceive as music is music.

And so, you know, when I think about music technology, yes, obviously, you know, live sounded payment and recording studios and, you know, that kind of thing.

But then, you know, music .. ambient sound, you know, all of these things are part of that world of sound and technology coming together.

How do we create a community within music?

And I think it's one of the things that music does very naturally.

It brings people together, you know, music making a lot of it is inherently a collaborative and community based art form.

It's a it's a rare person who can't listen to some music of any genre and find something about it that speaks to them, you know, whatever can music can play for them.

You'll see that their head will st.. one way or another, even if it's something ..

I didn't really like that, but but their physicality says they were drawn in by it.

And so I think that, one of the things that we do very intentionally to try to create community within the unit is we have regular, meetings of kind of all of the music majors and the faculty and the staff, and we all get together and we, you know, sometimes that's just passing information along.

But, you know, every two weeks there are performances that that, happen over in her recital hall that involve students from all the different areas of music.

And those range from, you know, our large ensemble concerts of course, the wind ensemble, the Symphonic Band, the Symphony Orchestra, the Concert choir, the Collegiate choir, two jazz ensembles.

Each one of those ensembles typically does two concerts, a semester, sometimes even more than that.

the really big concerts will be in Hendricks Hall, in the administration building.

But most of our concerts are in Hart Recital Hall, which is in the UT Music building, facing highway 13 there.

Beyond that, th.. of tolerance and of acceptance and of interest in the best part of diversity, right.

In that term of let's bring all the ideas to the table.

Let's let's create a space where everybody can, you know, speak the truth that they want to speak.

As long as we're dealing with truth, right.

And be open and, and, and get the best from each other that we can get.

Right.

It happens all the time that I sit down in a class with students or in a lesson with students, and I walk away learning something that I didn't know before.

I think at the end of the day, creating that sense of confidence and giving students that ability to begin eventually to analyze their own work and start to develop their own work in the direction that they want to go.

that's really the the nut of it, right?

That's that's the buckwheat, the hub.

We actually have, some funding in place to fund a what we call service ensemble.

So these students, get a special award to be in the service ensemble, and then any time, you know, the president's office or the dean's office or the Chamber of Commerce or, you know, whoever wants a group, we send one of the service ensembles out or over to the Missouri Veterans Home, you know, and go over and perform there.

so I think that that's, you know, that's kind of how we do that.

We're, you know, very tightly integrated with the Warrensburg Community Band.

Our faculty are regularly getting off campus and going out and doing clinics, and the high schools actually kind of all over the state.

and, all of that is to try to try to build that community and make, you know, kind of necessarily centered UCM, but having UCM be part of that larger network of music makers, kind of at all levels, from elementary through professional and amateur and, and all of that, and just try to try to connect with people.