Mary Simonson marched to the beat of a different drummer when she graduated this month with the Commonwealth's first Ph.D. in music.
Simonson entered the University's fledgling Ph.D. program in music in 2001 after developing an interest in the role women play in music during her undergraduate studies at Rutgers University.
Simonson's doctoral research explored female performance in early 20th-century American music and questioned why musicologists previously have not studied these women extensively.
"Historically, musicology was not eager to talk about physical aspects of music and bodies performing on stage ... because it makes [music] less intellectual and more everyday," Simonson said. Instead, "musicologists were interested in talking about music as an intellectual activity that you think about."
Simonson attributed her success in the program to both her peers and faculty members.
"The student body has been so tight-knit and it doesn't strike me that I'm the first [person] because I've had so many great colleagues," she said, adding that strong faculty support was one of the factors influencing her decision to continue her music education at the University of Virginia.
The program had "absolutely fabulous faculty members who were great scholars and were willing to share everything they had with [the students] like their knowledge and time, and their doors were always open," Simonson said.
Former music department Chair Richard Will said Simonson's dissertation reflects positively on both the music department and the University as a whole.
"It represents a culmination of a seven-year effort to launch the Ph.D. program and produces graduates who have a distinctive profile like Mary does," he said, adding that this new opportunity for graduate study also enhances the University's reputation for arts programs in general.
"The Ph.D. in music is part of a larger expansion and diversification of the music department, and that fits into the broadening of the arts at the University," Will said.
This expansion is evident in a wider offering of courses made possible with "the presence of highly capable graduate student teaching assistants" such as Simonson, he added.
Simonson is now headed to the University of California at Los Angeles to work as an assistant professor teaching music, dance and 19th- and 20th-century film.
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