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Recommendation Report: Musical Empowerment at UNC Chapel Hill

Claire Burke, Mila Mascenik, Stephanie Hall, Elisabeth Vohwinkel, and Natalie Peña-Galvis

Department of English, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

ENGL 300: Professional Writing and Editing

Dr. Shane Peterson

October 25th, 2023

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Introduction
Musical Empowerment (M.E.) is a UNC campus organization that provides mentorship and free
music resources to local underrepresented children, including an instrument of their choice,
music lessons, mentorship, concert tickets, and access to community events. The organization
depends on UNC student teachers to reach as many students as possible. Despite M.E.’s success
in making music more equitable, there are opportunities to expand its reach on campus and in the
greater Triangle area.

This report outlines the challenges of Musical Empowerment and our team’s objectives to solve
these problems. The report also includes our research methods, results, conclusions, and
recommendations about increasing awareness and recruiting more musically inclined student
teachers for M.E. There are currently not enough teachers interested to serve the extensive
waitlist of children waiting to be paired.

Problems
1. There aren’t enough UNC student teachers, specifically non-violin teachers, to meet the
high demand of students interested in joining the organization.
2. Although there is a large number of music-minded people among the student body, there
is a lack of awareness of M.E. and its mission for music resource accessibility.
3. Lack of awareness for M.E.’s mission to provide students with free music resources, as
music lessons are typically costly.
Objectives
1. Reaching more UNC student teachers, students, and community members through social
media campaigns and newspaper outreach.
2. Partnering with interested organizations, such as band fraternities, the UNC-CH music
department, and PlayMakers Repertory Company to help increase community
engagement in our groups.

Methodology

In order to better understand the extent of the lack of resources for music education, we had to
perform research to gather data that informed our decision. This section will discuss the different
methodologies we used to gather this information.

The first research we performed was digital scholarly research. We used Google to find news
articles and Google Scholar to find reputable journal articles that detailed statistics of the
disparity in arts education for underrepresented children.

The journals we took information from were Journal of Research in Music Education and
Journal of Educational Psychology. We used Ensemble School’s website to find more statistics
on how much music lessons cost. We also looked at the mission statement on the Musical
Empowerment’s website, which gave us more of an idea of how the organization was attempting
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to bridge the gap in music resources for children. This helped us decide on what else needed to
be done in order for their mission to be achieved.

Once we organized this information, we then did field research to see how much this issue has
affected our local community. The survey was posted on some of our members’ personal
Instagram accounts, as well as published on the UNC Musical Empowerment’s Instagram
account. Our members also asked some of their friends and people they knew in the music
department to fill out the survey. We sent out a survey we created to both the UNC English and
Comparative Literature listserv (which ended up being denied, so it was never sent to the
students) as well as the UNC Music listserv. Even though we couldn’t get the survey link to be
sent out to the ECL listserv, one of the ENGL 105 professors (Dr. Hilary Lithgow) told their
students about our survey and encouraged them to fill it out. We also printed out flyers created in
Canva that had a QR code for our survey and pasted them around Greenlaw and Hill Hall (the
English and Comparative Literature and Music buildings, respectively).

The questions we asked in our survey are as follows:

1. Do you know how to play a musical instrument? If so, which one?

2. Have you ever heard of Musical Empowerment at UNC-CH?
3. Did you know that under-represented children lack access to music resources?
4. Did you know 25% of North Carolina students live in poverty with little to no access to
music education?
5. Would you like to get involved in helping to wage this gap in our education system?
6. Are you a part of an organization that would like to work in collaboration with Musical
Empowerment to create radical change?
7. If yes, what is the name of that organization?

We adapted the following questions from our research proposal after gathering some answers
from the survey and getting feedback from survey takers that there were some things that needed
to be clarified or new questions that should have been added. This is the revised list of questions
in our survey:

1. What best describes your role?

2. Year? [if you are a student]
3. Major
4. Do you know how to play a musical instrument? If so, which one?
5. Click the link to this website: https://musical-empowerment.org/ Are you more likely to
become involved with the organization?
6. When you were learning your instrument, what music resources were helpful for you?
7. What music resources did you wish you had?
8. Have you ever heard of Musical Empowerment? [before this survey]
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9. If so [if you knew of Musical Empowerment], how did you hear about us?
10. Did you know that under-represented children lack access to music resources?
11. Did you know 25% of North Carolina students live in poverty with little to no access to
music education?
12. What, in your opinion, prevents UNC students from participating in Musical
Empowerment UNC-CH? [multiple choice question with multiple answers able to be
selected at once]
a. Lack of interest
b. Other time commitments
c. Unaware of the organization
d. Other
13. Would you like to get involved in helping to provide more music access to
underprivileged children?
14. Are you a part of an organization that would like to spread Musical Empowerment's
message?
15. If yes [you are part of an organization that would like to spread Musical Empowerment’s
message], what is the nrame of that organization?

Key: The highlighting above indicates which questions were multiple choice and which
were free response. Multiple choice is highlighted in blue, and free response is
highlighted in purple. As visualized above, most of the questions were multiple choice.

After gathering 38 responses to our survey, we looked at the data visualizations that Google
Forms provides automatically. This allowed us to analyze the major trends in the data that we
noticed.

Results/ Discussion

After our data was recorded, we analyzed it data through Google Forms’ “Responses” tab, which
organizeds and displayeds the responses to our survey, categorized by an overall summary,
responses to separate questions, and an individual’s responses to all questions.

Demographics
For demographics, 100% of the 37 people who responded to our survey were UNC students. Of
these students, 52.8% (19) self-identified as seniors, 36.1% (13) as juniors, 5.6% (2) as
sophomores, and 5.6% (2) as freshmen. They reported having a variety of majors — the most
common one was English, with 43.2% (16) of respondents listing English as at least one of their
majors. The second most common major was Media and Journalism, with 13.5% (5) of
respondents listing MEJO as one of their majors. With the subject of our group in mind, we
noticed that only 8.1% (3) of respondents reported being music majors.
!
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When asked if they play a musical instrument, 35% (13) of respondents said they do not. 29.7%
(11) of total respondents said they can play more than one instrument, and 27% (10) said they
can only play one instrument. As for specific instruments, piano was the most popular with 11
(29.7%) of respondents saying they play it.

It is evident that the majority of UNC students are able to play at least one instrument (56.7%),
the majority playing piano, contradicting the assumption UNC faced a shortage of music-minded
students--. Suggesting, this group of respondents, upperclassmen English and Journalism
students, should be targeted to be prospective teachers for Musical Empowerment.

Music-related Disparities
When asked if they knew that under-represented children lack access to music resources, only
8.1% (3) of respondents said yes, while 76.3% (29) expressed that while they did not know, they
did understand how this could be true. 15.8% (6) of respondents said they would like to help
change this statistic . When asked if they knew that 25% of North Carolina students live in
poverty with little to no access to music education, only 7.9% (3) said yes, they were aware.

This statistic implies that many students on UNC’s campus are unaware of the lack of
accessibility to music education by under-represented children, and how socioeconomic status,
language, and race may impact access as well. Alongside marketing for prospective teachers, ME
may need to provide education regarding the inequities underprivileged communities face when
trying to access music education.

Club Awareness/ Collaboration

For questions specifically regarding Musical Empowerment, 57.1% (12) of respondents said they
had not heard of M.E. before completing this survey. When asked if they would like to get more
involved in helping to provide more music access to underprivileged children, 29.7% (11) of
respondents said yes, and 16.7% (6) of respondents said they are a part of an organization that
would like to spread M.E.’s message (Campus Christian Fellowship, Carolina Taekwondo Club,
Marching Tar Heels, Earthtones Art Collective exc.). When respondents were asked what they
thought prevented UNC students from participating in Musical Empowerment, the majority
suggested unaware of the organization 91.9% (34), other time commitments 83.8% (31), and
lack of interest 27% (10).

This suggests that UNC students may not be aware of the organization or have other time
commitments that may result in a lack of involvement. Yet, most would appreciate the
opportunity to become involved in the cause. ME needs to allow for different levels of
involvement for UNC student s teachers with varying levels of availability, while also informing
prospective teachers of the varying levels of commitment available.

Recommendations
1) Contact local newspapers for a feature story on Musical Empowerment -
UNC’s independent student newspaper, The Daily Tar Heel, is widely read by students,
faculty, and community members. The newspaper distributes 10,000 free copies each
Wednesday during the academic year to about 200 distribution locations UNC-CH,
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Chapel Hill, Chatham, and Durham, making it the largest community newspaper in the
area, according to its website. In reaching out to the newspaper and informing them of
our team’s goal to increase awareness about Musical Empowerment, we could have the
opportunity to be interviewed by a reporter and be featured in the paper. This would bring
M.E. to the attention of UNC-CH and the greater Chapel Hill community.
a) Costs: Time costs for pitching the story to the DTH, waiting for a response from
them, scheduling an interview if approved, and the reporter writing the story; how
long it takes can vary.
b) Benefits: A feature story would increase awareness about M.E. and its mission to
many audiences as the DTH has a large readership.
c) Action Plan: This story would provide background information on M.E. for
students and community members unaware of it, highlight its important work to
help underrepresented students access music resources, and present its challenges
in recruiting student teachers. To add an extra layer of depth, the story could
include graphics showing the number of students in North Carolina who live in
poverty with no access to music, the generally high cost of music lessons, and
other visual representations of data related to underrepresented students accessing
music, which would further emphasize the significance of M.E.’s work.
2) Social media campaign including informational and engaging posts paired with data
analytics -
M.E. uses Instagram as its main social media platform and engages with new teachers
there. An informational campaign via three posts and three stories during recruitment
season would help boost M.E.’s reach. Additionally, analyzing past post performance
through the business creator profile can provide insight into how to target M.E.’s social
media towards their intended audience.
a) Costs: Potential cost to Instagram to boost the profile posts; time costs for post
creation, data analyzing, and engagement with followers; cost of publicizing the
social media via printed flyers.
b) Benefits: Increased reach towards M.E.’s target market, increased teacher
recruitment, better knowledge of the social media’s performance and how to
improve, raising awareness for M.E.’s cause.
[c)] Action Plan: This report will provide a series of examples for infographics and
stories M.E. can create and post to their social media. These posts will be most
impactful if they are organized around an upcoming event, such as recruitment or
the semestery recital. We recommend that M.E. posts every other day with one
grid post and one story post, then analyze the data results on the professional
dashboard after three days. M.E. should track this data, then at the end of the
campaign or the end of the event being publicized, M.E. should review which
posts performed the best and why.
c)[d)] Sample Posts:
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3) Reach out to and partner with other UNC organizations that would be interested in
furthering M.E.’s cause -
[explanation]
a) Costs:
b) Benefits:
c) Action Plan:
d) Sample Email:

To: music@unc.edu, pmaunc@gmail.com, sai.iota.tau@gmail.com, and

rosalie@email.unc.edu (media contact for PlayMakers)
From: Melody Mentors

Subject: Interest in partnering with UNC organization Musical Empowerment

Hello,
I hope this email finds you well. We are the Melody Mentors writing on behalf of
Musical Empowerment, a UNC campus organization that provides
underrepresented students interested in music with mentorship and free music
resources.

We are looking to connect with other organizations on campus interested in

raising awareness about M.E’s cause. You are a good fit because of your
connection to music and the arts.

The club currently does not have enough non-violin UNC student teachers to
serve the high number of students waiting to be paired with one. We plan to reach
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the student body, faculty, and community members through social media
campaigns and newspaper outreach to inform them of this challenge.

We would greatly appreciate your support in spreading the word about M.E. and
furthering its mission. We look forward to hearing any ideas you have about
doing this from your respective departments.

Sincerely,

Melody Mentors

Sources:

Average cost of private music lessons | 2021 complete guide. (2021, March 15).
Retrieved October 8, 2023 from https://www.ensembleschools.com/blog/lessons/cost-of-
private-music-lessons/
Elpus, K., & Abril, C. R. (2011). High school music ensemble students in the United
States: A demographic profile. Journal of Research in Music Education, 59(2), 128–145.
http://www.jstor.org/stable/23019481
Guhn, M., Emerson, S. D., & Gouzouasis, P. (2019). A population-level analysis of
associations between school music participation and academic achievement. Journal of
Educational Psychology, 112(2). https://doi.org/10.1037/edu0000376
[Photograph of music lessons]. (n.d). [photograph]. Musical Empowerment, Carrboro,
NC. https://musical-empowerment.org/what-we-do
What we do. (n.d.). Retrieved October 8, 2023, from
https://musical-empowerment.org/what-we-do