Music Therapy: Curriculum

"Students develop advanced music therapy clinical skills in an academic health center setting."

Students create their own music including songs, instrumental compositions and arrangements, solo and group improvisations as an integral part of the curriculum. By using the musical processes students enhance their access to their own creativity as well as their own understanding of the empathy for the individuals for whom they provide music therapy services at their clinical placements.

The Music Therapy curriculum combines many educational components. The content and teaching methods create a rich blend of integrated and interdisciplinary learning. The curriculum includes theoretical, practical/clinical, experiential, supervisory, and research learning.

Plan of Study
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Coursework

Music therapy courses use experiential and didactic methods of teaching to help students develop expertise in music therapy assessment and treatment. The curriculum integrates foundational core courses with specific music therapy courses. The core curriculum focuses on human development, psychopathology, microanatomy, group dynamics, and models of therapy, creative arts therapy theory, research, and clinical articulation skills in case presentations. These core courses include the study of literature related to psychodynamics, humanistic, and medical perspectives and creativity, for example, which helps the music therapist, learn about the process of the person in relation to the music making within the therapeutic relationship. The specialty courses focus on music therapy theory and technique. Through integrating the core and specialty course material students learn to understand depth processes within the therapeutic relationship along with the ability to communicate with other professionals while maintaining their unique identity as music therapists.

Under the supervision of a music therapist, students complete more than 1,200 hours of graduate clinical practicum and internship. Placements include pediatric and adult psychiatric and general hospitals, partial hospital programs, therapeutic day care, preschool intervention programs, rehabilitation settings, geriatric settings, forensic settings, schools, community music therapy settings, and home visits.

Students begin their clinical experience shortly after entering the program. The clinical education is enhanced by 3 to 3.5 hours of individual and group supervision per week.

First-year students have two practicum experiences within the first year. One practicum is with child or adolescent populations and the other is with adult or geriatric populations. These clinical practica are assigned through collaboration with the director and the clinical coordinator and require that a music therapist be on site.

The second-year internship lasts the entire second-year and offers an opportunity for students to mature and develop advanced skills with one or, in some cases, two populations. The internship is chosen by the student with assistance from the clinical coordinator and the director. The student has an on-site music therapy supervisor. There are occasional exceptions in which an off-site supervisor may be chosen by the clinical coordinator and the director.

Research

The program contains at least two research components. First-year students complete a research proposal related to the influence of music upon behavior. Second-year students are required to conduct original research in the form of a master’s thesis with the guidance of their director and a thesis committee. Once completed, a copy of the thesis becomes a permanent holding of the Drexel University library. First and second-year research projects are presented in a variety of research forums including the Drexel University’s Research, Scholarship, Innovation and Creativity Day, the Music Therapy Research Colloquium, and may be submitted to regional and national music therapy conferences.