Dr. Joy Galliford, 2010 Florida College Music Educator, is a researcher and lecturer for the University of Miami Frost School of Music in Miami, FL. Her responsibilities include teaching undergraduates, supervising associate teachers, serving as project director and music specialist for grant projects, and administrating and teaching in the University of Miami MusicTime program. A native of Reedsville, West Virginia, Galliford attended the University of Miami where she received a BM O84, MM ¹88 and Ph.D. O03 in Music Education.

Dr. Galliford has been a public and private school music teacher for over 27 years. Teaching is life for Galliford who shares her love of music with individuals from birth through adulthood. She has presented research and served as a clinician at international, national, state, and local conferences. Galliford, along with co-author, Dr. Joyce Jordan, wrote Experience the Music, a literacy-based curriculum using music activities that engage children in singing, focused listening, movement and the playing of rhythm instruments. Together, Galliford and Jordan have been involved in research projects from 2005 implementing this curriculum in low income child care centers with children birth to five. Children receiving the music curriculum scored significantly higher on tests compared to a control group not receiving the music treatment. In addition, Experience the Music was awarded one of the 2006 Children¹s Trust Awards for Excellence.

Joyce Jordan is Professor of Music Education and has been with the School of Music since 1982. She is primarily involved in the teacher-training program, teaching elementary and secondary general music education methods classes and serving as the coordinator of all music internships and supervisor of elementary placements. In addition, she teaches graduate courses in general music education, pedagogy and early childhood music education.

Jordan has published research on the musical capabilities of young children and is published in the major journals of the music education field. She has served on the editorial board of several journals, and currently is on the research review board for Perspectives, the official magazine of the Early Childhood Music and Movement Association. She was the research review editor for Early Childhood Connections, writing research reviews regarding young children in 4 issues a year, from the first issue of the journal in 1995 to the last issue in 2006.

She has presented research and served as a clinician at national, state, and local conferences, serving in leadership roles for a number of organizations. She served as President of Florida College Music Educators Association in 1988. During her term she founded Research Perspectives in Music Education, the research journal for that organization. In 1997 she was given the Florida College Teacher of the Year Award, and in 1999 she was the recipient of the Phillip Frost Award for Excellence in Teaching and Scholarship in the School of Music.

In 1996 she served as President of Early Childhood Music Association, an organization devoted to advocacy for music and movement in early childhood. Since 1987, she has promoted an outreach preschool music program in the greater Miami area and continues to advocate for music for disadvantaged children in the area through grants and other service programs. Since 2005 she has served as the Principal Investigator for a series of grants funded by The Children’s Trust in Miami, FL, working with colleague, Joy Galliford. From 2005-2007 three studies were conducted investigating the benefits of music for children aged 3-5 in low income areas. For the past two years, grants were awarded for a similar investigation working with infants to 3-years-olds. Children receiving the music curriculum scored significantly higher on tests compared to a control group not receiving the music treatment. It is anticipated that all the studies will be published in the near future.