Hope Munro Smith

New Fall 2008
Faculty Members

You can read complete short bios for each of our new faculty members here.

Hope Munro Smith, Department of Music, earned her PhD in ethnomusicology from the University of Texas at Austin in 2001. Her dissertation is based on fieldwork conducted in Trinidad and Tobago from 1998 to 1999 and focuses on the Caribbean popular song genres calypso and soca, as well as the music of the Trinidad steel band.

How did you get interested in Caribbean popular song genres?
This goes all the way back to my undergraduate days at the University of Vermont. Reggae was one of the most popular types of music at parties and at the college radio station. Later on I had the opportunity to take classes in Afro-Cuban drumming. When I was attending graduate school at the University of Texas, I played flute and percussion in the Afro-Caribbean and Brazil ensembles, and knew I wanted to do my fieldwork in the Caribbean or South America. Eventually I met several Trinidadians and decided to do my fieldwork in Trinidad and Tobago, focusing on Carnival music such as calypso, soca, and the steel band.

What is your instrument?
As an undergraduate, I played flute and piccolo as my main instruments, but also dabbled in both acoustic and electric guitar. Later on I learned various styles of world percussion, especially the steel pan from Trinidad. Right now I am practicing my ukulele that I bought in Honolulu a couple years ago for a number I am doing with Paul Friedlander and other colleagues for the department’s Glorious Sounds of the Season concert in December.

You’ve played in many ensembles. Do you have plan to assemble one here?
I would love to start a steel band at Chico State. There are a few things I need to accomplish to do that, one of which is raise money for the instruments.

Is there something else interesting you’d like people to know?
I love visual art, and if I ever have enough free time, I would like to take a studio art class.

Al Schademan

Al Schademan, Department of Education, Single Subjects Program, received his PhD from the University of Rochester in teaching and curriculum. His research focuses upon the significant forms of reasoning that youth from non-dominant groups learn through cultural-historical practices.

What is one of the most interesting things about your research?
That many students come to our classrooms as experts in some activity, whether that be playing a card game, a video game, a sport, rapping, dress and style, dance, singing, or a host of other activities.

What is your most interesting finding?
The really cool things that kids learn by engaging in everyday cultural practices that have been handed down for generations in their families. The Spades players that I worked with have amazing skills, including memorization, use of strategy, mathematics, and considering multiple variables when making decisions.

What are some of the successes you or colleagues have had sharing these insights and resources with teachers?
The goal is to change commonly held deficit views to more asset-based or resource-rich views of students. Just the other night in my EDTE 530 class (Fundamentals of Teaching Practice), I played a rap song written by one of my research participants. The students were amazed at the young girl’s ability to write poetry and set it it to music. The activity seemed to impact how they might view their students in the future, especially students from nondominant cultural and racial groups.

What is most different about Chico from where you last were?
The weather. Rochester can be a cloudy, rainy place for long periods of time, and the winters there can be long, snowy, and brutally cold. Yeah, I like the weather here in Chico!

What is your favorite place to hike/cycle, etc.?
Bidwell Park.

What does your son, Connor, think about the move?
Connor is adjusting very well to the move. He goes to Hooker Oak and he swims with the Aqua Jets. He’s nine, and he’s an only child, so his life revolves around playdates. That’s been a bit tough for him, as he has not made those close friends yet, but we’re working on it!

—Kathleen McPartland, Public Affairs and Publications