Rhoda Bernard
Ed.M. AIE '99, Ed.D. '02
With three degrees from this venerable institution, Rhoda Bernard is no stranger
to Harvard academics. She received one of her bachelor's degrees (in government)
from Harvard University in 1988. (She also earned another bachelor's, a B.M.,
from New England Conservatory of Music in jazz voice performance in 1994).
She got her Ed.M. after a year in the HGSE Arts in Education program in 1999.
And then she went on to do an Ed.D. at HGSE, graduating in 2004.
Before enrolling in the AIE program, Rhoda gigged locally in the Boston area as a Klezmer musician and vocalist, while teaching music theory and music education courses at the New England Conservatory of Music, working in various K-12 schools as a music teacher and consultant, and conducting research on arts integration. While a student in AIE under founding director Jessica Davis's tutelage, she studied qualitative and quantitative research methods. These research experiences led Rhoda to pursue a doctorate at HGSE, where she explored questions about music education and developed further interest in teaching full-time at an institution of higher learning.
"The AIE Program informed my work by making it possible for me to be exposed to various theories," says Rhoda. "I benefited from the work of Eleanor Duckworth (which I draw on in my teaching) and Howard Gardner (through his course on 'art and mind'), and from the study of quantitative research methods. I took introductory and intermediate statistics and especially enjoyed the latter—taught by Judy Singer."
Rhoda is now the chair of the Music Education Department at The Boston Conservatory. In this position, she is in charge of three graduate programs that train students to be K-12 music teachers. In addition to attending to her considerable administrative duties, she teaches an undergraduate introduction to music education course and graduate-level courses on the history and philosophy of public school education in the U.S., methods courses for the elementary music classroom, and a teaching practicum and seminar that supports student teachers at HGSE. Her current research, regarding the professional identities of music educators, has recently been published in the journal Music Education Research and in Action, Criticism, and Theory for Music Education. Rhoda advises both the Boston Conservatory and the statewide collegiate chapters of the Music Educators National Conference, serves as higher education coordinator for the MMEA conference, and edits articles for Massachusetts Music News. In July 2007, she will assume the presidency of the board at Young Audiences of Massachusetts and hold that office for two years.
In addition to all of her work in education, Rhoda continues to gig, two or three times a month, as a singer of Jewish music in Yiddish and Hebrew. Having recently inherited a beautiful Steinway baby grand piano, Rhoda has taken it as a sign from the universe that she should resume lessons for the first time in 17 years.
