by Mila Mascenik, EducationNC
March 17, 2025
This story was originally published by UNC Media Hub.
When an email with the subject line “Music Education Program Update” popped up in Corey Sheppard’s inbox last March, he said he couldn’t have prepared himself for the news it held about his chosen field of study.
Sheppard, a junior music major at UNC-Chapel Hill, would be part of the last cohort of students graduating from the university’s K-12 music education track within the Bachelor of Music indefinitely.
Since receiving the email, he said, he’s felt like the music education classes he’s been taking are “closing” behind him.
UNC-CH’s Department of Music stopped accepting new students into the music education program as of the Fall 2024 semester due to low enrollment, said Evan Feldman, the program’s coordinator. Feldman said across the state, enrollment in teacher education programs is down, contributing to a projected shortfall of teachers in general, not only in music.
“I think there’s this challenge between ‘Hey, just because we don’t have music education right now doesn’t mean we’re not music educators,’ because we’re still doing it,” he said. “I think there’s this side of us that deeply wants to make sure we can get it back.”
According to data from the North Carolina State Board of Education, the number of candidates enrolled in an educator preparation program was 15,865 in 2023, an approximately 10% decline from 2022. This downward trend is also evident among candidates in their first year of the program across all degree types — license-only, undergraduate and graduate — during the same period, the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction reports.
Sheppard could continue his studies “with full support and without disruption,” according to the email, because he had already been admitted to the program. Still, he said, the passion he and his peers have for the program made him sad to know that future students won’t get to experience it unless it’s reinstated.
“It just felt bad because I know there could have been some class of 2027 who had already been here, been waiting for that semester, and now the program has just evaporated under your feet,” Sheppard said.
Sheppard applied to UNC-CH’s music education program in the spring of 2023 because it aligned with his desired career: teaching middle school or high school band. His interest stemmed from his experience in band throughout middle school and high school, where he said he had influential band directors.
This semester, Sheppard is enrolled in seven classes, two of which are ensembles. He said once he started his classes for the music education pathway last spring, it’s been a “mad dash” to get the rest completed. The Bachelor of Music course requirements, combined with those for the music education pathway, total over 80 credit hours.
Despite the fast-paced curriculum, he would encourage students at UNC-CH to take a music or education class because he said it would give them a new perspective on learning, even if they don’t intend to enter the teaching field.
Feldman said he tells UNC-CH students interested in music education or who realize that the music education program isn’t currently formal that nearly all of the classes the Music Department offered as part of the program are still offered. Similarly, all the general education classes through the School of Education are also available for students to enroll in. He said the Music Department hopes to bring the music education program back “sometime soon.”
Students in the pre-professional program, Feldman said, are trained to be prepared to earn their teaching certification. They take classes required for the Bachelor of Music and additional ones for the music education pathway, some of which are not music-specific at the School of Education, such as “Human Development and Learning.” Other program components include students gaining teaching experience, completing a portfolio that includes creating lesson plans and taking two teacher certification exams, a general and music-specific one, called Praxis tests.
For music education students, classes conclude in the spring semester of a student’s senior year with the student teaching experience, formally Education 593 in the School of Education. The course is similar to a full-time internship that students typically complete in a public school, Feldman said.
Madi Marks, a 2024 graduate of the music education program, is in her first year as the band director at Apex Middle School. As a new educator, her biggest worry is what she can improve in her teaching.
“It’s hard to know what you’re not good at when you don’t have any experience, and it’s just true, student teaching can only prepare you so much,” she said. “And I try to give myself grace, and I talk to my students about a growth mindset and that it is also my first year.”
Marks, like Sheppard, was in her middle school band and high school marching band. She was “hooked from the start” with music, and as early as sixth grade, she knew she wanted to pursue music as her profession.
As one of the last cohorts of students to graduate from the music education program before the Music Department announced it would be paused, Marks said she is grateful that she had the opportunity to participate. Her favorite part of the program was working closely with her cohort of teachers and peers, which she felt was possible because of the smaller department size.
“It was a strange feeling when I heard about it because my first thought was, ‘Holy crap, I’m glad that I’m not two or three years younger than I actually am,’” she said.
Some of Marks’ students have expressed interest in following in her footsteps and becoming a band director. She said it hurts her to inform these students that the program at UNC-CH is paused; nonetheless, she encourages them to pursue that career. Other universities that offer music education pathways include Appalachian State University, Western Carolina University and North Carolina Central University.
To Marks, students interested in music education should still attend UNC-CH because there are other ways to obtain a teaching license outside the music education pathway.
While a bit more costly and time-consuming, there are alternative routes to earning a teaching certification, such as residency licensure and licensure-only programs, Feldman said. Individuals interested in this path can earn their teaching licensure by securing a teaching position and enrolling in a teaching program, according to TEACH North Carolina. For the latter option, Feldman said individuals can enroll in an educator preparation program and receive their certification by taking the required courses, such as the student teaching experience.
Michael Jenkins is the band director and dean of instruction at Eno River Academy, a K-12 charter school in Hillsborough. One hope he has for music education is for major colleges of education on university campuses to do more not only to recruit students — but also to find ways to retain them as they go through music education programs. He said what can happen is students go through their teaching observations and decide the program isn’t for them.
Regarding the current state of music education, he said that while the traditional orchestral wind band route is not declining, he has started seeing more students interested in creating music electronically. Educators must be able to adapt to current trends, he said.
“That makes sense because, societally speaking, kids are much more engaged in social media, making beats, things like that, like content creation,” Jenkins said.
He said there are approximately 60 students in Eno River Academy’s middle school band program and 30 in the high school one. Next year, the school hopes to see a “massive influx” of students in the latter because close to 30 current eighth graders will be entering the high school.
Jenkins’s approach to teaching music involves more than teaching his students how to play an instrument, he said. It’s also about fostering an appreciation for music and the skills that learning music brings, such as teamwork and self-motivation.
His hope is that more people start to treat music as a core part of students’ academic success.
“I think when we start treating music as an academic component to the day, just like math and science, I think we’ll learn that — especially music classes but visual art as well — that music can really be a glue that brings all the pieces together as it really does incorporate all of the other academic disciplines,” Jenkins said.
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