Mission Statement
The Ohio State University School of Music educates students for creative lives and professional fields in education, performance, scholarship, music industry, composition, technology, and the health sector. As an integral part of a major public, land-grant university with a strong commitment to teaching, research, and service, the school builds upon the relationship that binds music to other academic, artistic, and entrepreneurial disciplines. The school aims to provide instruction in the study and practice of music at the highest level, and in so doing, to promote an awareness of music as a humanistic study.
The school encourages musical research in all its dimensions by providing students and faculty opportunities for performance, creative activity, and scholarly inquiry. The school is dedicated to sustaining and advancing musical culture in the academy and in society at large, and it endeavors to be present and actively engaged with communities within the university, its urban setting, the state of Ohio, and beyond. Recognizing the dynamic and evolving character of music in contemporary life, the school acknowledges an ongoing responsibility to regularly evaluate its programs and procedures, and to explore a reimagination of its mission.
In keeping with the university’s broader mission, the school is committed to nurturing the best of Ohio’s students, while maintaining inclusive excellence by fostering national and international recruitment pathways.
The School of Music at The Ohio State University supports freedom of artistic expression.
Our compositions, performances and activities have the power to inspire and challenge, to protest and provoke, and to foster healing, understanding and growth. We defend the freedom to create such radical expression, and we acknowledge the responsibility to respect diversity and challenge injustices. We embrace compositions that explore and engage critically with the world’s spiritual, religious and cultural traditions, both through and beyond the individual experience. Such compositions may feature difficult subject matter, employ explicit language, and explore challenging themes. The School of Music wholeheartedly supports the rights of individuals to develop and share their visions within the broad bounds of artistic expression.
Statement of Diversity
The Ohio State University School of Music recognizes that excellence is inseparable from Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, Access and Belonging. We seek to enrich the educational experience of the students we serve and the community at large by acknowledging, respecting and engaging with the ideas, perspectives and music from diverse populations.
We strive to be a place of mutual trust, inclusive excellence, safe dialogue and understanding. We acknowledge the inequities that have permeated our performance spaces and the academy at large. We understand that we have a responsibility to develop opportunities for students and community members to engage in music making in a contemporary context. We aspire to be a pioneer in this work; a place where all voices are valued and heard. These efforts are ongoing and part of our mission to create a more equitable and diverse School of Music.
Land Acknowledgement Statement
The School of Music would like to acknowledge that the land The Ohio State University occupies is the ancestral and contemporary territory of more than 40 tribes of Indigenous peoples. We wish to honor these tribal nations and recognize the historical contexts that continue to affect the Indigenous peoples while also expressing our gratitude and acknowledging our privilege in working on this land.