Hello everyone! My name is Hannah Skillman and I am a Junior at Temple University studying music therapy with a concentration in Oboe and a minor in Cognitive Neuroscience. In the coming weeks I will be starting my first Music Therapy practicum placement in a retirement community/memory care unit.
As my takeover month is wrapping up on the @musictherapyednow Instagram, I have been thinking about some of the content I have posted throughout the month. One of my posts, that got the most engagement, was my post about where you can get an Undergraduate Music Therapy degree. This was not something that I was aware was such a need in the Music Therapy community. There was a great response to the post with people commenting about the schools they went to and schools they were about to attend! But, as I watched all of these comments flood in and see how much pride people had for their schools that offered a Music Therapy degree, it made me think, “why don’t more schools offer an Undergraduate Music Therapy degree?” While I understand that it is a field that is more up and coming, I think there is great value in having a Music Therapy program at any given school. A lot of colleges and universities have music programs, so why not add a music therapy program using music therapists from surrounding hospitals? Why not offer music therapy at the community college level to make it more affordable to those who cannot afford a traditional four year university? While I do not have the answer to these questions, I see the importance of making a music therapy degree more accessible for all. A lot of classes that need to be taken in order to obtain a Music Therapy degree are very similar to classes any music student would need. Classes like Music Theory, Music History or even a general guitar and piano class can just have additional students in them while just adding the Music Therapy specific courses to the class list for the University. While this is a problem that will not fix itself overnight and also requires more than just interest from people, I think this would be a great next step in making the field of Music Therapy more accessible.
I am so grateful for the opportunity I had to take over the @musictherapyednow Instagram for the month of August and I hope to continue to advocate for the field of Music Therapy and for more schools to offer Music Therapy, even when I am not doing a takeover. Feel free to reach out with any questions or comments, my personal instagram is @hannah.skillman !
