Get them hooked.(Forum Focus: Collegiate Chapters)

Each year, after I return from the MTNA National Conference, I am anxious to get back home and share with my students all that I learned, discovered and experienced while attending the Conference. The National Conference is an important marker in my year, and it always comes at a great time--just in time to give me a much-needed boost and re-energize me for the test of the academic year.

I have the good fortune of teaching at both the collegiate level and independently in my home. At the collegiate level, I direct a graduate piano pedagogy program, and as the number of students in my pedagogy program grows, I am keenly aware of two things: how important it is for these students to become MTNA members and how few of them are actually members. I must confess, I was not a member while I was in school, and now, having been an MTNA member for quite a few years, and having attended many National Conferences, I certainly am aware of the many benefits one receives by being an MTNA member. The truth is that I'm sorry I did not join sooner. So how could I get my students to join MTNA sooner, rather than later? Two answers that immediately came to mind were to start a Collegiate Chapter and to get my students to see some of the benefits of joining MTNA by attending a National Conference.

This year, well before the National Conference, I determined that I would do my best to get at least one of my pedagogy students to travel to Austin, Texas, for the Conference, in hopes that he might share his enthusiasm with the test of my pedagogy students. My students and I had a couple of meetings prior to the registration deadline, and I told them about how much they would benefit from attending the Conference. As it turned out, four of my students--two masters and two doctoral--attended. As I suspected, it was a much greater experience for them than any had anticipated. I would pass them in the halls of the convention center between sessions and they could hardly wait to tell me how much they had just enjoyed a session they attended or what incredible piano playing they had heard at one of the competitions. I knew then that these students were hooked and would likely become lifetime MTNA members. This ...