Consilient Spheres of Influence in a Land Grant Setting

At Penn State, music technology is something of a stranger in a strange land. As a programme, it began in the early twenty-first century, when the necessity of the moment was an anticipated revision to the guidelines from the National Association of Schools of Music (NASM), the North American accrediting body. Music schools were charged with ensuring that music majors were exposed to ‘relevant technologies’. It was left largely to individual institutions to interpret what this meant. At Penn State, a course was created to address this guideline, and it generated interest among students. This course then spawned a series of related courses. These courses eventually created enough of a curricular presence to warrant creating an undergraduate minor. We now expect that the minor will spawn an undergraduate major. The music technology programme's locus lies not solely within the School of Music; rather, it overlaps as an interdisciplinary area with a variety of programmes throughout the university's offerings. These overlaps are a unique feature of the programme. It is an unusual arrangement, but it is a product of its time and place. Three populations of students have coalesced, and the pedagogical challenge has been to create a curriculum that can serve all of them. The programme might be thought of as series of concentric spheres; each is centred around the same general concept structure, but with expanding breadth for different levels of student involvement.