Conversing in Tune: Senior’s Podcast Shares Tunes Enthusiasm | GW Currently

By John DiConsiglio

For Ellie D’Andria, a senior in the George Washington University’s Columbian Higher education of Arts & Sciences (CCAS), music has often been at the center of her life.

From to start with discovering to engage in piano at 6 to main the GW Jazz Orchestra on trombone and vocals, D’Andria can’t keep in mind a time when she wasn’t part of a choir, an a cappella group or a marching band.

But in the course of the COVID-19 pandemic, D’Andria’s musical shops instantly went silent. The Jazz Orchestra canceled its performances. Venues the place D’Andria had taken the phase, like D.C.’s Twins Jazz Club and Blues Alley, shuttered their doors.

“Music is these kinds of a massive aspect of my heart,” she claimed. “When I was absent from it [during COVID], I realized how it infused my lifestyle with pleasure. I knew that by some means I had to get again to it.”

At GW, D’Andria selected not to go after a songs big. “I desired it to continue being a pleasurable pastime that I did at the conclusion of the day,” she said. Even though lots of subjects appealed to her—her system-load ranges from humanities to figures to American Indication Language — she settled on a special interdisciplinary major (SIM), a program distinctive to CCAS that permits students to layout their personal system of study. D’Andria’s aims are centered on education plan which, she stated, “seems like the normal intersection of my curiosity in human mind progress and political science-institutional modify do the job.”

But D’Andria still discovered a way to increase music to her reports. For her capstone thesis, she developed a podcast called Signed, Sealed, Shipped: A Enjoy Letter to Audio Training. About five episodes, she interviewed neuroscientists, songs therapists and training advocates to boost tunes instruction in K-12 classrooms though expressing her own musical passions. She hopes her podcast will persuade policymakers, educators and audio enthusiasts to raise their voices in support of the worth of audio.

“I want to show them that songs is not just this frivolous educational dessert—while math and science and looking through are the most important classes,” said D’Andria, who programs to pursue a occupation as a therapist after finishing a COVID-postponed review-aboard semester in Denmark. “Music can be the two stunning and beneficial way too.”

Mastery of Several Disciplines

Audio has been a prevalent refrain for D’Andria’s entire spouse and children. Her mom, who sings and performs guitar, was a new music big in college or university. Her father performs trumpet and piano, and her brothers are experienced on devices from the oboe to the tuba. “We’re one of those irritating people that does five-section harmonies on Christmas carols,” she laughed.

In 2021, D’Andria used a semester volunteering at a COVID screening heart in her Urbana, Illinois, hometown. By means of her 8-hour shifts, she’d hum her preferred Erykah Badu track and assume about how to recapture the seems she was missing. By the time she returned to Foggy Base, she had a program. For her capstone project, she envisioned a podcast that put together her musical capabilities with her investigate and academic interests.

With her mentor Political Science Chair Eric Lawrence, she explored the background of general public instruction policy. As a investigate assistant in Professor of Psychology Carol Sigelman’s lab, D’Andria seemed at music’s cognitive backlinks to psychological wellbeing and social emotional studying.

She conferred with adviser Affiliate Professor of Education and learning Policy Yas Nakib, turned to School of Media and General public Affairs Director of Strategic Initiatives Frank Sesno for job interview enable and asked Corcoran College of the Arts & Structure Director Lauren Onkey for podcasting suggestions. Heather Stebbins, assistant professor of electronic computer songs, taught her how to use digital broadcasting applications and program synthesizers.

“I was completely blown away by [D’Andria’s] SIMs project,” Sigelman stated. “It demonstrated incredible mastery of multiple disciplines and numerous systems, great interaction competencies and a excellent phase existence.”

Every single podcast episode features interviews with specialists on the value of songs instruction, which include a neuroscientist and opera singer who spelled out the cognitive gains of musical coaching and a tunes therapist who explained the links to psychological health and fitness. In just one episode, a plan specialist outlined an “advocacy software box” for advertising and marketing audio education and learning at a time when, according to the Grammy Tunes Instruction Coalition, 3.8 million pre-K-12th quality students in the United States have no access to tunes instruction.

In the last episode, D’Andria requested musicians to communicate about music’s affect on their life. D’Andria herself shared cherished musical recollections, from conducting her significant faculty marching band to singing Louis Armstrong’s What a Wonderful Earth to her critically sick grandfather. “I needed to finish by talking about audio as if we did not have to advocate for it,” she explained. “Sometimes I want to argue that we should really educate music basically because it fills us with so significantly pleasure.”