NEWS
NORMAN, OKLA. – Being a professional musician is a challenging endeavor but for college performers, managing the demands of academic responsibilities while maintaining vocal health adds an extra layer of complexity.
Melissa Baughman, Ph.D., an associate professor of music education at the University of Oklahoma, is acutely aware of these challenges. As the head of a new student wellness initiative at OU called Breathe Out, she provides music students with mental health resources that improve their physical, mental and social well-being.
Recent work by Baughman and her colleague Darrell Jordan, D.M.A., at Seattle Pacific University, is gaining considerable attention in the academic arena. The researchers are taking a close look at how wellness impacts the voices of collegiate musicians and singers. Their work, titled “Teaching the Whole Singer: An Examination of Methods Used to Address Student Wellness in the Collegiate Voice Studio,” is gaining popularity.
“Vocal health has always been an issue but now we are understanding that wellness is real and we are working on ways to address it with students. It is a buzzing topic for music educators across the country and globally as well. Vocal health for the whole singer has become more mainstream in terms of awareness,” she said.
The concept of musician wellness was first introduced into university classrooms in the early 1980s. Music educators wanted to integrate wellness education into their academic programs. Baughman noticed the topic really gained traction around the COVID-19 pandemic. The researchers’ survey of music educators from 13 locations in the United States shows that.
Some respondents shared that during the pandemic they referred students to wellness resources and professionals. Other respondents said they addressed wellness by offering a safe environment and consistently checking in with their students.
One respondent cautioned though, “It is not my job – and potentially harmful – to be an armchair physician or psychologist. But I believe it is my job to see that students know the resources available to them and understand how they can be proactive in balancing the challenges of learning and staying well.”
Another respondent shared a similar view: “The difficulty lies in drawing the line with addressing elements of wellness – physical, emotional, financial, occupation and intellectual – without overstepping your level of expertise. Essentially, our job is to refer our students to specialists as we see fit and to be sure not to try to become their mental health counselor, financial adviser, etc.”
The work continues.
“This is a growing field in research. Fortunately, a lot of it came after the pandemic, especially with mental health and the thinking of social wellness for people – especially for college students,” Baughman said.
Baughman, a vocalist herself, says musicians use their whole body and soul to create music.
“Wellness is an integral part of making them successful. I wanted to hone in on what that means for the singers, knowing what I know about vocal health in general. Then I wanted to tie that into wellness as a human. And how all those things relate to each other. This is what we were aiming to find,” she said.
Baughman says one of the survey’s biggest findings was that each instructor surveyed agreed that student wellness impacts their performance abilities. “If you are having a bad mental health day, it will impact your singing. If you have a stomachache, it will impact your singing. There are so many things and it all relates back to how you will be able to perform in training.”
About the University of Oklahoma
Founded in 1890, the University of Oklahoma is a public research university located in Norman, Oklahoma. As the state’s flagship university, OU serves the educational, cultural, economic and health care needs of the state, region and nation. OU was named the state’s highest-ranking university in U.S. News & World Report’s most recent Best Colleges list. For more information about the university, visit ou.edu.
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