Catherine Jarjisian, DMA

Professor of Music (Education)

(860) 486-3731
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Prior to coming to the University of Connecticut, Catherine Jarjisian served for three years as interim dean of the Cleveland Institute of Music and as a Fulbright Specialist in Cairo, Egypt. From 1998 to 2006, she was director of the Conservatory of Music at Baldwin-Wallace College in Berea, Ohio. She held prior faculty positions at Oberlin College (1983-1998), Iowa State University, and the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater and adjunct positions at Rosemont College and Temple University.

Graduating from Susquehanna University in 1968 with a degree in music education, she held public school posts in general and choral music in New Jersey and Pennsylvania and worked with a program that provided high school students with summer travel and performing experiences in Europe. She earned her graduate degrees from Temple University and was the 2001 recipient of Temple's Esther Boyer College of Music Alumni Association's Certificate of Honor.

For several years, she performed professionally with the Robert Page Cleveland Singers. She has served as president of the Ohio Association of Music Schools, as a visiting evaluator for the National Association of Schools of Music, on NASM's Commission on Accreditation, and more recently as an NASM Consultant. Previously a specialist in elementary and early childhood music education, Jarjisian founded and directed the Oberlin Preschool Music Lab in 1984 to serve area children and provide a pre-professional teaching laboratory for conservatory students. She was invited to present workshops and clinics at schools and conferences throughout the continental U.S. and Hawaii as well as abroad and undertook research and other professional travel in Europe, Africa, and Asia. She was previously editor of the Bulletin of the Midwest Kodály Music Educators Association and served on the editorial boards of Update: Applications of Research in Music Education and the Kodály Envoy. Her articles and reviews have appeared in a number of professional journals.