Department of Music to welcome music and brain research scholar for two-day residency Feb. 19-20

ASHLAND, Ohio – The Ashland University Department of Music will be hosting special guest Laura A. Stambaugh, Ph.D., whose scholarship bridges learning music and brain research, for a two-day residency on Thursday, Feb. 19, and Friday, Feb. 20. Stambaugh will lead four sessions, highlighted by a Thursday night presentation, “Does Music Make You Smarter?” at 7 p.m. All sessions are free and open to the public and will take place in room 242 of the Center for the Arts.

During the day on Thursday, Stambaugh will instruct classes on “The Myth of Music Memory” from 10:50 a.m.-12:05 p.m., and “Music and the Brain for Musicians” from 1:40-2:55 p.m. Friday’s classroom session, titled “Music, Well-being, and the Brain,” is 11-11:50 a.m.

Stambaugh serves as an assistant professor at Rhode Island College where she coordinates the music education area, teaches courses in music education and supervises student teachers. She has special expertise in music cognition and related educational applications of research in brain science. Previously, she taught at Georgia Southern University, Western Washington University and in public schools in southern New Hampshire.

Stambaugh’s primary research examines the development of automaticity in playing instruments, largely through motor learning perspectives. She seeks to answer questions on the cognitive mechanisms of how people learn to play wind instruments, and is also interested in the development of error detection skills, the music teacher pipeline and music and autism. Stambaugh is the author of “Music and the Brain for Musicians: Understanding the Research and Getting Involved.”

This residency is sponsored by the Gretchen French Endowment at Ashland University. For more information, contact Ron Blackley, director of choral activities and professor of music, at rblackle@ashland.edu.