Music Chair Wins Teaching Award in Entrepreneurship

In September, Jonathan Middleton, Music Department Chair and Composition Professor, and EWU Information Systems and Business Analytics lecturer, Jeff Culver, attended the Experiential Classroom—a three-day clinic held at the University of Tampa designed to help attendees develop creative ways to teach business entrepreneurship.

One of the workshops included a competition where fifteen teams had two days to develop and present a 45-minute business case study and while Middleton is not a business professor, he decided to stick to the fundamentals of what he does.

He focused on asking a lot of questions and working to create an engaging classroom environment with the students to draw them in and in the end draw out the solution to the problem. Middleton understands that working with students this way helps the students claim ownership for what they are learning and helps them become more attached to the process.

And it paid off! The team led by Middleton was awarded first place!

While Middleton’s expertise is not in teaching business curriculum, he is excited to be working with the business and engineering departments on the new music major: BA in Music Technology and Entrepreneurship.

For more information on the new major, head on over to the Music Department website.