Welcome current students. This page contains information for all undergraduate students in the music education degree or certification-only programs.
Important Documents You Can Find On This Page:
Advising Appointment Packet — Four-year suggested schedule for music education — Music Education Degree Checksheet
Return to the Music Education main page
Becoming Engaged as a Pre-Professional
MENC Collegiate
MENC Collegiate, also known as CMENC, is the university student arm of NAfME: The National Association for Music Education. Boise State’s chapter of MENC Collegiate has won awards for membership and service projects, and is active around the university and local community. Students participate in collaborative efforts that provide opportunities to experience professional life before entering the teaching field.
Click here to visit and join the BSU CMENC group on Facebook.
Idaho Standards for Music Teachers
Students should be aware of the standards set by the State of Idaho for teacher certification, available online here.
Music teacher standards begin on page 142 of the document.
Music Education Advising
Music Education advisors are assigned by the letter of your last name, or by special status:
Dr. Jim Jirak: last names A-L, jjirak@boisestate.edu, C202.1
Dr. David Mathie: last names M-Z, and all certification-only students, dmathie@boisestate.edu, C215
Dr. Mark Hansen (Music Department Chair): Transfer students, markrhansen@boisestate.edu, C103
Music education majors should see an advisor at least twice during your program of study:
1. In the fall of the first year, where you will plan out your courses up to about your fourth semester that you will take your music education interview.
2. In the semester you take your music education interview (usually around the fourth semester), where you will plan your courses to student teaching and graduation.
By the completion of your music education interview, you will generally have an advising plan through to graduation. Upper division students can and should come back for additional advising if you need to deviate from that plan before graduating.
Before any advising appointment, you should review the Advising Appointment Packet
Many of the documents in this packet are available individually throughout this page.
Steps to Getting Your Degree
All undergraduate students should review the following degree documents:
Four-year suggested schedule for Bachelor of Music in Music Education
Official degree checksheet for Bachelor of Music in Music Education
Freshman/First Year Students
All first year students (freshman and transfer) should schedule an advising session before the end of your first semester.
Freshman students in their first semester should enroll in specific courses. See the list here.
It is very important that all freshman should sign up for these courses as many are prerequisites to later courses, and missing these prerequisites in your first semester can add significantly to the time it takes to complete your degree.
Music Education Interview
The Music Education Interview is a pre-requisite for the upper-division methods courses you will take during your junior and senior year. Students generally complete the Interview around the end of the sophomore year, in the semester in which you are enrolled in MUS230 Foundations of Music Education. The Interview is a chance for the music education faculty to meet with you, and to assess your progress in developing knowledge, skills, and dispositions appropriate to a future professional educator.
Music Education ePortfolio
Each music education student completes an online portfolio. This ePortfolio is built in stages through several key music education courses, and is made up of representative work showing the student’s progress. Examples of portfolio items include lesson plans, teaching videos, and self-reflection writing. Click here to visit the ePortfolio information page.
Applications and Assessments
Music education students must apply to the College of Education for the final stages of your degree or certification program. There are two applications: (1) application for the Teacher Education Program, which includes your next-to-last semester at BSU, commonly referred to as Block I, and (2) application to student teaching, your final semester before graduation. Each of these applications occurs early in the semester prior to your taking the required classes, so be alert to announced deadlines. For example, if you plan to student teach in a spring semester, you will apply to student teach the previous September, and you will apply to the Teacher Education Program in February prior to that.
Important note: for each of these applications, there are GPA requirements that you must meet. You can review these requirements in the Advising Appointment Packet. To find your overall GPA, major GPA, and education GPA, open your Academic Requirements Report from your Student Center in BroncoWeb. Near the bottom of that report, you can find those three GPAs calculated for you. Click here to view a sample screenshot of this section of the Academic Requirements Report.
Please visit the College of Education, Office of Teacher Education for more information.
Students, always remember that in the College of Education you are a SECONDARY education major, regardless of your teaching grade-level interests or the fact that you will be K-12 certified by virtue of your music endorsement.
Praxis Exams
Applications to the Teacher Education program and your certification from the State of Idaho require test scores from the Praxis I and Praxis II exam series. Please click here for more information on Praxis testing for music education majors. You can also visit the Office of Teacher Education page for assessment information, including required scores.
Professional Year
Your professional year consists of your Block I semester and student teaching semester. These should be your last two semesters before graduating. You can complete these two semesters in any order during the academic year (e.g. fall Block I followed by spring student teaching and graduation, or spring Block I followed by fall student teaching and graduation).
During your Block I semester you will complete all your final academic course requirements at the university, including your senior recital. During the semester, you will need to take a “block” of co-requisite courses in the College of Education. See the Four-year Suggested Schedule above for more information. Also this semester, you will be placed into a local school for part-time field experience, where you will complete 50 hours of work with an experience music educator. This field experience will consist of observation, lesson planning, and teaching in preparation for your full-time student teaching.
During your final semester, your only task will be student teaching. No other courses are taken during student teaching. Student teaching consists of a full-time placement in a local school, where you will work every day with an experience music educator. This will essentially be your full-time job, even though you will be registered for 16 credits with Boise State University. Music teachers around the country consistently cite student teaching as the greatest learning portion of the degree, where you will have the opportunity to apply the lessons learned from your academic courses in real world situations. Student teachers also meet two to three evenings a month on the university campus for group seminar.
Options for students seeking only teacher certification
Students who are already in possession of a bachelor’s degree in music but who wish to earn teaching credentials from the Idaho State Department of Education may apply to enroll in the music education certification-only program. These educational techniques and methods courses, combined with field experience, will prepare you for teaching and will meet the requirements to earn a certification recommendation from the Department of Music and the College of Education. Note that the certification-only program does NOT grant a degree of any kind. For individuals interested in seeking a second bachelor’s degree, follow the standard application instructions for degree-seeking undergraduate students.
Download this document to view the general requirements of the certification-only program. Note that individual requirements may vary depending on transfer credit from your bachelor’s degree program.
Current certification-only students should also review the above information on Getting your Music Education degree at Boise State [link to that section on this page], as many of the requirements and sequence of courses are the same.