In April, undergraduate and graduate music therapy students along with Victoria Vega, Ph. D. and Joy Allen, Ph.D., professors of music therapy, represented Loyola University New Orleans at the southeast regional conference for the American Music Therapy Association held in Spartanburg, S.C. The group members presented seven sessions focusing on emerging music therapy topics and participated in the poster-board presentations.
Allen said students were selected based on the quality and applicability of their proposals. “Of all the universities in the region, Loyola was the most represented on the conference program.”
Presentations included “Thrown into the fire: Experiences with at-risk children in New Orleans,” “Multiculturalism: Becoming a culturally competent therapist,” “World Rhythms: Percussion Techniques around the Globe” and “Project PRIEMMANS, the Pre-college Incubation Experience for Majoring in Math and the Natural Sciences.”
For the poster-board presentations, Allen presented on music psychotherapy interventions with breast cancer survivors and Sareeca Hoskins ‘11 presented on her work as an Albert Schweitzer Fellow.
The Loyola Music Therapy Club was also recognized with the 2011 American Music Therapy Spirit Award during the conference. The award is given to a school that demonstrates a sense of teamwork through service to the community and a commitment to increasing public awareness of music therapy in the community. “In the past year, club members completed 22 service projects within the greater New Orleans community,” said Allen.
Students who presented were Christopher Beamon, a senior from New Orleans; Sam Bradley ’10, a graduate student from New Orleans; Hoskins, a graduate student from Atlanta; Alex Legge, a graduate student from New Orleans; Lily Ferguson, a sophomore from Nashville, Tenn.; Christine Johnson, a sophomore from Metairie; and Brain Fleischer, a junior from St. Louis, Mo.
Other students who attended were Hilary White, a graduate student from Carlsbad, Calif.; Lizzie Lang, a senior from Metairie; Rebecca Rieger, a graduate student from Columbia, Mo.; and Carroll Rabalais, a graduate student from Lockhart, Texas.