Music educator and conductor joins ASU program
Meet Erin Cole Steele, the School of Music, Dance and Theatre's new clinical assistant professor in the music learning and teaching program. Courtesy photo
This fall, educator and conductor Erin Cole Steele joins the Arizona State University School of Music, Dance and Theatre as a clinical assistant professor in the music learning and teaching program.
After more than two decades as a middle school band director, Cole Steele has spent the last seven years as the director of the Division of Education and a senior educational consultant for Conn Selmer Inc. In that position, she has the opportunity to partner with Jason Caslor, director of the ASU Wind Bands program, to host a Conn Selmer Institute event at ASU.
“I have also been fortunate to meet and build relationships with other faculty members including Dr. Joyce McCall, Dr. Jamal Duncan, Dr. Sandra Stauffer and Dr. Heather Landes, all of which have given me a window into the fantastic things happening in the School of Music, Dance and Theatre,” Steele said. “Combining my passion as a band director and for helping develop and mentor future music educators, I was naturally drawn to finding ways to contribute to the Music Learning and Teaching program at ASU.”
In addition to her career as an educator, Cole Steele has pursued an active conducting career as she believes conducting is an important part of being a band director at any level.
Cole Steele previously taught in a Title 1 middle school for 22 years and had thousands of students participate in her programs. She credits her successful middle school program for helping open doors for her to guest conduct, including a performance at the prestigious Midwest International Band and Orchestra Clinic held in Chicago.
“Since I have been retired from the classroom, I am even more grateful for those opportunities because they help me reconnect with my love for working with students to create amazing musical performances,” she said.
She has conducted all-state bands, honor bands and other performance ensembles across the country and internationally in Germany, Ireland and Australia.
Both music and education have been central to Cole Steele’s life: Her dad was a band director and her mom was a special education teacher. Cole Steele started playing piano in first grade, cello in third grade and flute in fourth grade. She discovered her love for teaching in high school, when she apprenticed with her dad to help teach marching band drills — later teaching the drills on her own. As a junior and senior in high school, she was recruited by colleges and received scholarship offers as a cello performance major.
Cole Steele said she never lost her love for teaching, so by her sophomore year in college, she changed her major to music education and never looked back.
“My passion now is to be able to share what I've learned with future music educators, which I believe can be an invaluable addition to the amazing foundational education they're getting here,” Cole Steele said. “My hope is that by sharing my hard-earned wisdom, I can help the students in music learning and teaching be prepared to hit the ground running and start building their own successful programs on day one.”
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