About The School | UO School of Music and Dance

About The School

(Approved May 28, 2008)

The University of Oregon School of Music and Dance has a threefold mission:

1. To prepare students to lead lives enriched by the arts of music and dance;

2. To provide comprehensive programs for those pursuing professional careers in music and dance, and a broad range of courses for those seeking a liberal arts education;

3. To serve as an educational and cultural resource for the University of Oregon, the local community, and the state of Oregon

Beall Concert Hall

"Music is like food. You gotta have it. It feeds the soul ."
—Lorry Lokey, Business Wire founder, on his gifts totaling $5 million toward updating the music building

The UO School of Music and Dance is nationally recognized for its dedication to the highest levels of excellence in teaching, performance, and research. Located in Eugene, Oregon—nestled between the Pacific coast and the Cascade Mountain range, and noted for its natural beauty—it is the only comprehensive School of Music and Dance in the state of Oregon authorized to grant master's degrees in dance and doctoral degrees in music.

Degrees Offered

B.A., B.S., B.M., M.A., M.S., M.M., M.F.A, D.M.A., and Ph.D

Key Dates in History

Founded in 1900, the UO Music Department is a charter member (1928) of the National Association of Schools of Music. Joined in 1991 by the Dance faculty—which had been offering classes at the UO since 1911, and which established a dance major in 1959—we changed our name in 2005 to the "School of Music and Dance." The UO Music and Dance departments are among the oldest west of the Mississippi.

Concert Hall

The 540-seat Beall Concert Hall, modeled after Boston Symphony Concert Hall, is acclaimed for its superb acoustics and Jürgen Ahrend pipe organ.

Dougherty Dance Theater

The Department of Dance is housed in Gerlinger Annex, with four spacious studios on the third floor. Two of these studios convert to become the 250-seat M. Frances Dougherty Dance Theatre, with lighting and stage equipment for department concerts. The dance department also houses dedicated computer workstations for audio and video editing.

Technology

Future Music Oregon features three studios with extensive MIDI-based and computer composition systems.

The Kammerer Microcomputer Lab provides workstations with mainstream software for music notation and instructional software in music theory and aural skills.

SOMD Recording Studio

Research

The state's largest research collections belong to the UO Libraries including resources devoted to music and dance. Special music-approval plans provide the library with the latest scores from Europe and North America. Of special interest to jazz musicians are the Henry Beau Collection and the Red Nichols Collection. Dancers have access to sixty professional journals.

A $17.8 million transformation

The music building, recently named in honor of UO President Dave Frohnmayer's mother, MarAbel B. Frohnmayer '32, will increase in size by about 50 percent. Highlights include the following:

A 3,000-square-foot rehearsal room for large ensembles
Three spacious new classrooms
Fifty-one practice rooms
Thirty new faculty teaching studios
Dedicated teaching and rehearsal space for jazz and percussion
Renovated computer lab

500+
more than 500 music and dance majors with 150 graduate students

20-25%
of UO students taught annually by our faculty

700+
more than 700 annual performances by UO students and faculty in Eugene, the United States and abroad

8.3.1
Student/Faculty ratio

7%
International Students

30%
Non-Oregon U.S. residents

63%
Oregon residents