VanderCook Music College official gets national award
By Adam Kivel
Charles Menghini, president of
VanderCook College of Music, has been recognized numerous times for his
staunch support of music education. Yet no award has been as interesting
as the ceremony in which he was honored along with First Lady Laura
Bush, the History Channel, country vocal group the Oak Ridge Boys, and
Sesame Street star Elmo.
Menghini was acknowledged alongside that cast of characters as one of the National Association for Music Education’s Lowell Mason Fellows. He and 11 other music educators were nominated for contributions in their field.
Menghini’s merits include his involvement in boosting music participation through the organization Support Music. “It’s an alliance we’ve come up with,” Menghini said. “The National Association for Music Merchants (NAMM), the largest organization of music manufacturers…is very concerned with getting people to participate in music.” NAMM established Support Music as “a public service initiative that impacts resolve and support for music education in local communities around the United States.” The group also works to bring federal and local government into music education advocacy and does public service announcements.
Menghini sees involvement in music as critical to our culture. “It’s important to have an interest in how we can get people attuned to music, whether as a participant, a child playing, an adult playing; whether they’re playing in an organized school venue or an unorganized venue, a garage band, a rock and roll band, a community band, playing in the church, or a drum and bugle corps,” he said.
NAMM also is “very interested in how music affects the development of young people,” Menghini said and mentioned “the Mozart effect”—a theory that classical music promotes brain activity more than other types of music. NAMM is “very interested in research, trying to find out whether music helps people grow, if it makes them healthier, if it makes them smarter,” he went on.
Unique college
Menghini’s work at VanderCook also has garnered praise. Tucked into a Mies Van der Rohe building on Illinois Institute of Technology’s campus, VanderCook is the “largest music education college in the nation, and the only college in the nation to specialize in music education” according to Menghini. “We bring in over 15,000 music students and teachers for various programs each year. We feel like we’re in a position to help them, and they can help us.”
Menghini has been a professor at VanderCook since 1994 and is entering his fourth year as the school’s president. “It’s a complete, fully accredited college offering a bachelor’s degree and a master’s degree in music education,” he said. “We also offer a continuing education program.”
Though located at IIT, the schools are not related. “We rent space from IIT,” Menghini said. “We currently are in negotiations to lease a second building to expand into a second facility” to accommodate increased enrollment, he explained.
VanderCook uses a unique curriculum that takes “a much more practical approach to everything we’re doing,” Menghini said. “Students are learning to play and teach all of the instruments found in a band or in an orchestra. At larger schools, kids would go for music education and would only have a specialty. Our kids declare a major instrument, but they learn everything.”
Practical approach
This practical approach prepares students perfectly for teaching, according to Menghini. “Our kids are in great demand,” he said. “In fact, over the past two years, we’ve placed 100% of our graduates.”
Menghini also conducts the school’s band, teaches graduate level courses in the summer and continuing education classes, and runs “a lot of clinics and workshops, speaking at conventions, things like that,” he said.
As for worries about mass cuts of music programs across the country, “We hear a lot about little music programs being cut all the time,” Menghini said. “But the truth of the matter is they’re not being cut all the time. I think administrators at schools see that music does something special for their kids.”
Menghini believes that “what makes a kid love music or not love music is the teacher. It’s so important. Kids look to their teacher for three things: information, motivation, and affirmation. If they’re not getting at least one of those three things from their teacher, they’re out of there.”
VanderCook College of Music, located at 3140 S. Federal St., hosts many performances and recitals. Information about the school and its events can be found at www.vandercook.edu or by calling (312) 225-6288.
