Janet Welby is a Visiting Lecturer in the Music Department at UMass Lowell.

Janet Welby

Assistant Teaching Professor

Pronouns
she/her/hers
Department
Music
Phone
978-934-3879
Office
Moloney Performing Arts Center 1st Floor

Expertise

Music Education, leadership, diversity, and culture. Program Supervisor of Teacher Candidates in the Masters of Music Education Degree

Research Interests

What is "World Music?" As a white, cisgender, able-bodied, Euro-Western musically trained woman, how can I bring diversity into the music classroom and be an ally to underrepresented groups?

Education

  • Ph.D. Leadership in Schooling, University of Massachusetts, Lowell, Massachusetts
  • M.M. Music Education, University of Massachusetts, Lowell, Massachusetts
  • B.M. Applied Clarinet, New England Conservatory of Music, Boston, Massachusetts

Biosketch

Janet Welby is an Assistant Teaching Professor of Music and Student Teaching Program Supervisor at the University of Massachusetts, Lowell. As a scholar of diversity in music and music education, she seeks ways to bring diversity into the music classroom. Along with global music courses, she has taught in the areas of music theory, conducting, and pedagogy. As a musician, she conducts choirs, performs and teaches piano, has performed on clarinet and recorder, and has built a repertoire of musical compositions that have been performed in the Boston area. Prior to her position at UML, she was a public school elementary music teacher in the Reading and Arlington Massachusetts school systems.

Selected Awards and Honors

  • Recipient of the 2022 Excellence in Teaching Award representing the UMass Lowell Music Department
  • Recipient of the Society for General Music in Massachusetts (SGMM) Award for Excellence in General Music, 2013
  • Member of staff at First Parish Bedford honored as part of a national “Breakthrough Congregation” (Fall, 2012), for growth of programs

Selected Publications

  • Author of the “Global Music” chapter in Engaging Musical Practices: A Sourcebook for Middle School General Music (edited by Suzanne L. Burton)
  • Dissertation: "How does a Euro-Western trained music teacher describe and understand his positionality, and how does this influence his instructional choices in an urban, diverse classroom? A portrait of goodness."
    Thesis: "When resources are scarce, can an elementary music teacher create a high quality music program using existing methods found in multicultural music?"

Selected Presentations

  • Presenter at Massachusetts Music Educators Association Conference in Boston: Music IS Literacy: Making Connections Between K-5 Music Learning and the Massachusetts Frameworks for Literacy 
  • Workshop developer and teacher for APS classroom teachers for integrating global music into the general classroom
  • Clinician at the Massachusetts General Music Festival
  • Featured in Arlington Cable program (ACMI) Arlington Schools Arts Beat 
  • Curriculum designer for general music K-5
  • Participant in Global Learning Project, the DHE funded UMass Lowell and Middlesex Community College collaborative grant project in faculty’s use of criteria from the Global Learning and Intercultural Knowledge and Competence 
  • Participant in Massachusetts Arts Council grant, “Bringing Cambodian Music into the Lowell Public Schools”