Megan Kaes Long Earns Excellence in Teaching Honors

Associate Professor of Music Theory Megan Kaes Long was one of three Oberlin Conservatory faculty honored with an Excellence in Teaching Award for the 2021-22 academic year. The award, presented in spring 2023, recognizes faculty who have demonstrated sustained and distinctive excellence in their teaching.

Long was honored in 2021 with the Society for Music Theory’s Wallace Berry Award for the book Hearing Homophony: Tonal Expectation at the Turn of the Seventeenth Century (Oxford University Press, 2020). She was a faculty architect of Oberlin’s revised curriculum in music theory, which broadened the scope of music studied by first-year students beginning with the 2021-22 academic year. Among the courses she teaches is Art Song from Franz Schubert to Margaret Bonds, its title reflecting the conservatory’s extension of emphasis well beyond the Western classical canon.

“Megan Long, one of today’s leading theorists, brings her field-leading research into dialogue with her teaching to the benefit of the many students fortunate to sit in her classroom,” Dean of the Conservatory William Quillen says. “We are incredibly grateful that she served as one of the driving forces and a chief architect of the innovative, visionary redesign of our conservatory’s music theory curriculum. Her guidance in developing these forward-thinking initiatives serves as a model for schools of music everywhere.”

Each year, the conservatory honors three members of the faculty selected by the Conservatory Faculty Council. Joining Long with Excellence in Teaching honors for 2021-22 are Assistant Professor of Music Theory and Aural Skills Bryan Parkhurst and Professor of Piano Dang Thai Son. 

Learn about 2021-22 Excellence in Teaching honorees from the College of Arts and Sciences.