Students following professor to new school

College Majors Music Major
1

<p>Hi, sorry for another thread.</p>

<p>I have another somewhat odd question.
As far as music majors go, if the applied professor should move to a different school before the graduation of a few students who are in their third years (say, one performance and another performance/ed, which is a five year deal) and have been in the studio all this time before-hand, is it unheard of for these students to "follow" the professor to the new school? Provided, of course, they can pass requirements of auditions/academics and such...and wouldn't mind footing an extra semester or whatever, to make up for dropped credits.</p>

<p>I've heard of it happening with a big name teacher or two. I was wondering if anyone here has experienced a similar situation. It <em>may</em> be happening with my own teacher, and a few of us "oldies" in the studio are concerned about preparing senior recitals with a completely new teacher whom we will probably only know for two semesters. The quality/fit of a possible replacement is also worrying.</p>

<p>Would this be a tremendous/unwise thing to do for the ed/performance student, given that the new place is in another state? It is likely the ed/performance major will go on into performance in grad school, if that means anything.</p>

<p>Thanks!</p>

2

<p>I (my son) doesn’t have any experience with that, but my first thought is that it doesn’t make a lot of sense to change colleges just to follow one professor, unless there are other issues. It might even be beneficial to have had more than one applied music professor.</p>

<p>This is a little off topic, but my son’s private piano teacher while he was in high school was the piano teacher at a local college. At my son’s last receital, he announced to the group that he would be leaving the college to go to another college to complete his doctorate degree, and he introduced everyone to the person who was taking his place. Someone asked me if my son if he was going to start taking lessons from the new guy, I said “no, he is taking the piano teacher to college with him” - turns out that the college that they teacher was going to for his doctorate was the same college that my son was going to attend the next fall.</p>

3

<p>If my daughter does end up at her top choice school, she would follow the teacher to the next school if he moved. He is the only reason she would attend that school. So yes, there are some situations where I can see performance major following a teacher.</p>

4

<p>You do not see this very often as undergrads since at most schools you would have to take a number of courses over again. Schools are stingy taking transfer credits and many have a minimum number that have to be taken at the school so it could mean another year or more due to the double major before graduating. Funds can also be an issue if there were scholarships at the first school, there may not be the same kind of money for a transfer. </p>

<p>So if you are a junior, prepare the best you can before the departure and work with the new professor. If you are a sophomore, you could consider a transfer. But in any case you may be too late applying now. Most schools had Dec 1 pre-screening requirements.</p>

5

<p>Our son was a music performance undergrad at a state school who transferred to another public in the same state after sophomore year. (The move was not to follow a professor)
Even though the transfer seemed straightforward being public to public in same state, he ended up needing one additional semester to graduate. They picked over his credits pretty thoroughly I guess.</p>

<p>He also had an offer to transfer into a private conservatory that would have required an additional year to graduate.</p>

<p>With music programs especially, I think a student is more likely to face some issue of credits not transferring to the new school.
I’d second the suggestion that it might be an advantage to study with a new applied professor. Best of luck to you.</p>

6

<p>Transfers often have to make up credits. Sometimes credits from the prior school are rejected, so there are do-over courses, but sometimes the new school just has more requirements. One of my daughters transferred from a small private school in Ohio to a state-funded school in our state (she is an art major, and she transferred because the school of art there is better in her discipline.) Although all her art credits were accepted, she has a lot more academic “gen-eds” to do at the new schools-- more writing, math, all that stuff. She’s much happier, having transferred, even though it will take longer to</p>

<p>Of course, the extra time in school is expensive (less so in our case, coming from a private school to an in-state, state-funded school.) I know of many musicians who have followed their teachers to a new school. Whether or not their graduation is delayed depends on the particular requirements for the new school. If it’s a music conservatory or department within a larger university (like, say, Rice) there are likely to be more requirements to fulfill if the student is coming from a regular conservatory.</p>

7

<p>I didn’t think this was uncommon.</p>

<p>Wasn’t this the EXACT sort of thing that happened recently when a professor (violin?) moved from Cleveland to Rice? I read that it got to the point that Rice had SO many students transferring in that they even began to rethink allowing students to apply to a particular studio, and making them only apply to the school and then placing them into a studio. As I read further about the chain reaction this had, if I remember correctly Cleveland hired a replacement from Jacobs (I think) and a bunch of kids followed THAT professor. (And, if IRC, a quartet-in-residence from Illinois then moved to Jacobs and, well, the chain reaction continues)</p>

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<p>DD’s story is correct, Paul Kantor left Cleveland to go to Rice, and reputedly a lot of his students went with him and Jaime Laredo left IU/Jacobs to go to CIM (in part because his wife teaches cello at CIM), and students moved with him.</p>

<p>It is probably common, and it makes sense. High level music instruction is not like taking algebra or calculus, it is more like an apprentice/master relationship, and as such it can be very, very difficult to switch teachers. Teaching with musical instruments tends to be very individualized and it is why the search for a school and teacher is so difficult, it is finding the right match. If a student stayed at the program they were at, they would need to find another teacher who they were compatible with and hope that a)the teacher had room and b)would be willing to teach him/her, it is kind of like going through the audition process again, and if the current teacher worked well for the student, it could be the replacement teacher just isn’t as good (for him/her)…not to mention that there is going to be lost time, as the teacher/student adjust to each other. Usually (but now always) the music teacher will try and give recommendations on who the student should think of switching to and IME will often grease the skids so to speak when this occurs, talk to prospective teachers and try and open the door. And it is likely that a high level teacher will not leave a program and join one that is at a less higher level, moving from CIM to Rice is not exactly a step down (and where the weather is concerned, big step up:) or moving from IU/Jacobs to CIM is not exactly a step down, either, so the student is likely not to move from a program where the kids are pretty much all high level to a program where the level of the kids varies widely. </p>

<p>As others have pointed out, transferring has its drawbacks, even if following a teacher (rather then a straight transfer), students could lose credits, plus if they had financial and merit aid from the old school potentially that could be lost, too (pure speculation, I would guess that if the student is one of the stars of the teacher’s studio, that they would arrange at the new school for the student to be taken care of, whereas the ‘regular’ students who moved might not be so lucky in terms of aid or merit aid.).</p>

9

<p>Other things can happen-- a teacher can decided to retire, or could die during you tenure in his/her studio. This happened recently with cello studios at Juilliard. One teacher died; another retired. Current students had to find a new studio-- and they felt as if they were competing with incoming students for spots in their preferred studios.</p>

10

<p>Thank you for the responses.</p>

<p>The move is not certain, yet, but it has been weighing on our minds. This current program is admittedly, overall, not the best – the move for the teacher would be a definite step up. There is a wide range of skill, with a rather small pool of intensely dedicated and talented students who are here, more or less, to take advantage of the in-state tuition and to study with particular teachers. The school itself still has a lot of growing to do, but we are in a very economically depressed area, salaries have been cut, and the city in general could be better.</p>

<p>This teacher is the only one here for the instrument, so we would have to bank on the school making another good hire. For me personally, it would be very hard to make a switch…I consider them a mentor, and frankly, the thought of having to get used to a brand new teacher with whom I might not even learn well from and then having to put on a big recital and do the graduate school audition thing without my current teacher’s help is pretty frightening, not to mention depressing. Studying with them is basically the only reason I have remained here. :/</p>

11

<p>That’s an unfortunate situation, where there is only 1 teacher and then they will be leaving. I think the best course of action would be to talk to your teacher and see what he thinks. He may be willing to ‘take you along’ when he moves to a new school, or he might have other suggestions, like perhaps another teacher you could work with privately if the teacher they hire isn’t that great (I realize that means more of a financial commitment for yourself, which may or may not be doable). In these situations that I am aware of, the departing teacher usually takes an active role in helping their students with the transition and so forth.</p>

12

<p>In the “Be careful what you wish for….” department, on another thread, musicamusica announced the arrival of Herbie Hancock and Wayne Shorter to the Jazz dept at UCLA. I am thinking how sad I might feel if I decided to leave a school, only to find out that one of them might have been be my teacher……</p>

<p>As the competition for all music jobs becomes keener, I think we can expect to see more great professional musicians signing up for teaching jobs. Many of them may indeed be great teachers! So if your teacher ends up leaving, I would weigh the decision to leave very carefully. Odds are that you might actually be getting a better one.</p>

13

<p>This happened at SSU. One of the voice teachers, Ruth Ann Swenson moved to Texas to teach. All of her students who are now in their senior year fly to Texas for their lessons. I believe she flew out to California as well once to twice.</p>

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<p>There is the obvious thing that a replacement teacher can be a better teacher then the one who left…but there are things working against that. Someone can be a great teacher and not work well with certain students, for example, so the school could replace teacher X with teacher Y, where Y is supposed to be a great teacher, and find out that Y doesn’t work well with OP…it is a tough situation. Likewise, I am always leery of ‘celebrity’ teachers, a lot of the time because of their name students want to study with them, but when you look at the reality a lot of the great musicians are not necessarily great teachers, because their ability transcends teaching, they cannot teach what they do, or can’t teach at all; worse, celebrity teachers often only take a couple of students, since they are very busy performing (and nope, not commenting on the UCLA situation directly, since I of course know who those guys are as musicians, but don’t know what they are like teaching one bit…:). </p>

<p>Especially where a student has studied with a teacher for 3 years, then faces a senior year without him/her, it is even more rough, after that time they have gotten into a rhythm I would guess and so forth…</p>

<p>Plus there is the unknown factor, if the school drags its feet naming a replacement, the student may not have time to decide whether the new teacher is any good, the school could potentially replace the teacher well after the student would have to decide on transferring (put it this way, in a situation like this, the school may not be thinking of the students all that much, so may spend a lot of time trying to attract someone they think is prestigious, and announce in July "we have so and so’, which would mess up the student who might want to transfer).</p>

<p>Like I said, talk to your teacher about that contingency, and more importantly, find out when he was planning to leave, it could be he would be leaving after your senior year, so it wouldn’t matter. And usually in this kind of situation, with a single teacher, the teacher is involved in selecting a replacement, so he might be able to tell you that ‘yeah, i think this guy will work well with you’ or “I would recommend trying to transfer to my new school”.</p>

15

<p>I know somebody who did that last year when one of our clarinet professors left to teach at Ohio State. It makes sense if you go to a specific school to study with that teacher. If you went to the school for the program it offers but not the teacher, then I would think more on it. The main reason I go here is for the professor who teaches flute here and if he left I know I would be completely lost.</p>

16

<p>This DID happen to my D in her senior year! Her teacher quit teaching at the end of D’s junior year and her seniors were left with no option other than to go with the new prof that was being brought in. After a rough beginning, she is working well with her new teacher and I really think that she sees this as a positive experience now.
As for the situation surrounding the “shifting string teachers” this year, the stories have taken on a life of their own. In reality, the majority of Kantor’s students did not follow him to Rice, and the fact that CIM took on more students from IU was a function of the fact that Jaime Laredo and his wife, Sharon Robinson, both joined the faculty, bringing violin and cello students in their wakes.</p>

17

<p>I am a senior music ed/voice major at a state school and am currently applying to grad schools for performance, and I recently experienced a similar situation. I am very sorry that you have to deal with this; it’s tough.</p>

<p>In my case, my teacher was not moving to a new school, but retiring, so I had no choice but to take on a new teacher. Of the four voice teachers at my school, two left at the same time. Across those two studios there were only three seniors; thankfully, we were given the option to study with the preexisting teachers and not stuck with the new hires without knowing who they’d be (I’d had my new teacher for a couple of other courses before, so we knew each other a bit). My recital went well, and I also took on a major role in an opera this semester, and now I’m prepping for auditions; I find that I have grown a lot as a musician and performer this past semester, and I found out just how adaptable I can be. While I miss my old teacher, I found that having a fresh perspective provided a welcome change of pace, and my need to impress my new teacher kept me on my toes.</p>

<p>That being said, I knew that I was in good hands with the teacher I’d be working with, and I had other reasons for staying at my school. If you don’t have any other reason to stay at your school, definitely consider following your teacher.</p>

<p>I know it sucks. Hang in there! Everything will work itself out for you.</p>