by Lindsay Ginn
A&E Editor

Music students will have something to sing about with the three new Associate of Music (AM) degrees that are now available to students.

In addition to SCC’s ever-thriving music department’s current list of programs and degrees, they’ve devised a way for someone who just wants the music experience as well as the student who would like to transfer to a four year school to finish their undergraduate degree. There are three new degree options to choose from:

• Associate of Music, Classical Voice
• Associate of Music, Classical Piano
• Associate of Music, Instrumental Music

Each of the degrees have requirements that vary from 99 to 103 credits of 100-level or higher classes, completed with a 2.0 GPA or better. Susan Dolacky, a professor of music, fully supports these new additions. “The music faculty wanted to create such a degree to help those students especially interested in applying to conservatories,” she said.

With such an impressive music department, it doesn’t take a lot of imagination to envision the massive amounts of music-based information that students will attain through this program. Dolacky shares the sentiment, “To my knowledge, there is not a community college in this state that has our quality and quantity of academic music and performance classes available.”

Accompanying the new Classical Piano degree are three new piano courses to be offered in the music department. Collaborative Piano will be offered this winter quarter, along Piano Pedagogy in the spring and Piano Literature for the winter quarter of 2009. Students may take these courses even if they’re not trying to obtain the AM degree.

Five students have already graduated with this degree; four vocal students graduated last spring with both their Associate of Arts (AA) and Associate of Music (A) degrees, and an instrumental student also received their AM degree at the same time. Nancy Matesky, another music professor, estimates that there are between 250 and 300 students currently enrolled in a music program, and with the addition of the Associate of Music degree, that number may grow.