Student Chapter – ACDA at UMD

Here at the University of Minnesota Duluth, we run the UMD Chapter of the American Choral Directors Association. We work hard to ensure that everyone who graduates from the Vocal Music Education program has resources, materials, and exposure to shared experiences before they start teaching. We schedule and participate in events to share ideas and take students into the community to experience our city’s diverse music culture.

We aim to host two events per month.  We generally start with an event similar to a masterclass, where we bring in guest speakers who teach us a lesson. Last semester we had our professor, Dr. Mason, come in to teach our students the basics of conducting through a conducting masterclass and workshop. We also had two recent alumni come in to give a presentation on what to expect in the transition from college to a new classroom and how to prepare to be the most successful teachers we can be. We had Ms. Downing, who is currently in an elementary classroom, give us lesson plan ideas and various helpful resources. Mr. Hunke, a middle school choir teacher, taught us what to expect in a middle school setting and shared plenty of warmups that his middle schoolers enjoy. In our previous year, we had an event taught by UMD Vocal Professor, Rachel Inselman, which gave our students vital information about teaching transgender voices and how to work through the voice changes that hormones can create. Overall these ACDA events give us diverse classroom experiences and important knowledge and resources needed to create a successful choral environment.

The second type of event is run by the officers. We do a lot of different activities during these meetings. We give ideas on lesson plans, have holiday-themed events where we teach warmups to our members and share lesson ideas for the holidays, and also like to teach music to provide our members with some repertoire that will prepare them for going into the classroom. This semester, we are doing an event where we get together and play boomwhackers, so we have experience with that before we get into a classroom, and can once again share ideas with our members.  Our community becomes closer knowing we can rely on each other for ideas. We also do informational events for conferences and networking, explaining what conferences are coming up and how we can help our members get to them.

Whenever we get the chance, we like to do community events. This includes bringing our members out to see the Lyric Opera of the North, an opera company based in Duluth. On average, we bring 10-15 members to various opera productions throughout the year. This creates opportunities for our members to meet other professional musicians and see professional concerts. At the end of each semester, we also go to Pizza Luce, a popular restaurant in the area, to facilitate community building between our members.

ACDA is a great resource for new and upcoming Music Educators. Through informational events, resources, materials, and community building, the UMD ACDA student chapter helps to develop strong new Choral Music Educators.

About Samantha Hempel

Hello! My name is Sam Hempel and I am the President of Duluth’s student chapter of ACDA. I am in my third year here at UMD to become a music educator and am expected to graduate next year. My love for music started at a young age, some of my favorite genres to listen to are Folk, Alternative, and Ethereal. In my free time, I like to read, I read a lot of fantasy and romance, I like to play video games, recently I’ve been enjoying League of Legends and Risk of Rain, and I like to go to the gym, all of these activities I also do with music playing! I want to mention ACDA wouldn’t be what it is without the help of my officers Ben, Tori, and Conor, with their help we have achieved a lot this year.