Jacqueline Smith

Jacqueline Smith is a Lecturer in Music in Music Education. Her teaching and research focus on eliminating barriers to education in the arts for students of all abilities. She teaches courses in supporting students with dis/abilities in music education, introduction to research, curriculum vision and design, access and equity in music education, and trauma-informed and inclusive pedagogy in music education. Dr. Smith serves as the Massachusetts Music Educators Collegiate Advisor and as the advisor to the BU Chapter of the National Association for Music Education. She has also served as the Higher Education Representative for the Eastern District of the Massachusetts Music Educators Association.

Dr. Smith was a Visiting Assistant Professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst where she taught instrumental methods, history and philosophy in music education, introduction to music education, and student teaching seminar, and was an Adjunct Faculty at the University of Hartford’s Hartt School where she taught courses in instrumental methods, band and string project, woodwind methods, improvisation in music education, curriculum design, learning theories in music, measurement and evaluation, graduate research colloquium, dance pedagogy, and student teaching seminar. She also taught Suzuki piano and coached chamber music in the Hartt Community Division and was the founder and director of the Prism Project, a performing arts program for students with disabilities at the Hartt School Community Division. While at Hartt she received University of Hartford’s Gordon Clark Ramsey Award for Creative Excellence in Teaching.

Before moving to higher education, Dr. Smith taught instrumental music at the middle school level at the Rectory School in Connecticut for twenty years where she received the Kellogg Grant for Excellence in Teaching, the Outstanding Faculty Award, the Rosbottom Award for teaching, and the One Teacher Can Make a Difference Award as voted on by the students. Dr. Smith began her career as a music therapist at the Center for Autism in Philadelphia and at in-patient care in the Boston area.

An active clinician, Dr. Smith works with practicing music educators throughout the Northeast providing professional development workshops on supporting students with disabilities in music and understanding neurodiversity in the classroom. Dr. Smith holds a NAfME credential for teaching students with behavioral and emotional special needs and has presented at international, national, regional, and state conferences on her research in teaching music to students with autism and learning disabilities, and in using trauma-informed and inclusive pedagogy in the music classroom. Dr. Smith is published in The International Journal of Music Education, Visions of Research in Music Education, and Arts Education Policy Review.

Dr. Smith holds a PhD in Music Education from the University of Hartford’s Hartt School where she received the Regents’ Award for Graduate Students, as well as a Master of Arts in Creative Arts Therapy from Drexel University, and a Bachelor of Music in Music Education from the Eastman School of Music.