Tuesday, March 4, 2008

Guess who united UCLA's music school with 30 million dollars?

A classmate (Art) mentioned a few weeks ago that UCLA was not certified by the National Association of Schools of Music, those infallible g-ds of musical academics. (Granted, the faculty is first rate for the applied faculty, musicology and ethnomusicology alike.) I didn't believe him, but it turns out he was right. It seems to be an outdated way to run a beaureacracy, but there were separate departments for each, and at least for ethno and musicology, it is a very prominent place to get an advanced degree.

This past November, however, the three departments united under a new banner. There's a very brief video about it here.

How did these three departments merge and what did they become? Well, after a 30 Million dollar grant from Herb Alpert (unheard of in a public university, possibly second only overall to Yale's 9-figure grant), these three departments became The UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music.

I don't know that Ray Mase or Rolf Smedvig would have 8-figures to spare.

3 comments:

Patrick Rappleye said...

As a matter of interest, I believe all of the University of California Schools are organized that way, and I don't think any of them are accredited by NASM (although I could be wrong?)

Peter G said...

There was probably a poorly worded ballot initiative that guarantees that each university has like 500 departments to be as cost-ineffective as possible.

That's really interesting, though, and a good bit of context.

www.jsayreallen.com said...

The most amazing part about this is that you found another way to post about Herb Alpert. I didn't think it could be done!

I am waiting for the Chuck Magione School of Music or the Kenny G School of Music.