Episode 7 - Empowering Student Success Through Creative Collaboration: A Conversation with Dr. Eric Guinivan

Welcome back to the CFI Faculty Lounge Podcast, where we explore the ideas, experiences, and challenges shaping academic life. In this episode, Grammy-nominated composer and associate professor Dr. Eric Guinivan joins us to talk about teaching, creativity, and the ongoing effort to support students while sustaining a meaningful work-life balance. 

Dr. Guinivan shares: 

• Early teaching experiences, from high school marching bands to graduate teaching at Indiana University 
• His innovative work at a public charter school with mixed-age classrooms and peer mentorship 
• How enthusiasm, analytical thinking, and creativity shape his teaching philosophy 
• Strategies for setting boundaries and maintaining well-being as a faculty member 
• Reflections on a workload equity project and what it revealed about faculty expectations 
• Thoughts on collaboration, composition, and stepping outside his creative comfort zone 

Tune in for an inspiring conversation about empowering students, embracing experimentation, and building a collaborative learning environment rooted in care. 

Transcript

“To me, a big tenet of success is bring the best out of everyone that you're working with in whatever setting that you're working with them in. You have to, you need to love doing it, and be willing to pour your heart and soul into it. I think of one of my goals as helping students to unlock their imagination.

I think first and foremost, it's empowering the success of others.

Welcome to the CFI Faculty Lounge Podcast, an outlet created for continuous learning and actionable insights for faculty. I'm your host, Eric Magrim, inviting you to join us in conversation with dedicated educators who share their experiences, challenges, and effective solutions. Today, I'm excited to welcome the wonderful and talented Dr. Eric Guinivan, a Grammy nominated composer and percussionist, as well as an associate professor within the School of Music at James Madison University.

Welcome, Eric, and thank you for being with us today.

Thanks so much. Thanks for the opportunity to chat.

So can you walk us through your journey as an educator, how it all began, and what brought you here today?

Yeah, sure thing. So I always knew I wanted to teach. I think I discovered that in high school.

I just love sharing knowledge with friends. Loved it in high school. Always thought that I wanted teaching to be part of what I do.

And when I was in my undergraduate degree, I went to Indiana University. And while I was studying there, I did some work with some of the local high schools. That was my earliest teaching experience, working with marching band performers and doing some work arranging for marching bands.

And that experience helped confirm for me I do really enjoy doing this. And it was really rewarding to be able to make a difference in the lives of some high school students when I was just recently there myself. And my first significant classroom teaching experience was when I was in graduate school, when I was teaching assistant ship, a teaching assistant and I was working in that role.

And then later as an adjunct instructor. So I spent a lot of time getting to observe master teachers and then help out with their classes. And then eventually then be the instructor of record for some courses myself.

Around the time that I finished graduate school, I was teaching as an adjunct instructor at the University of Southern California. And I also started teaching full time at a public charter school in Eagle Rock, California that had a very experimental curriculum. And that that experience taught there for three or four years, made me dramatically rethink my teaching philosophy, not just the pre-college level, but as a whole, and helped me to kind of approach the challenges of teaching from a lot of different angles that I think opened up a lot of possibilities for creative approaches in the classroom.

And then I came to JMU in 2013 and have been teaching here since then.

Wonderful. Now, I'm gonna probe into one of those. As you said, angles for creative instruction.

Can you talk a little bit more about those?

Sure. Yeah. So I, well, I mentioned some of my earliest teaching experience was as a TA and as a graduate student.

And you're experiencing an instructional method in a particular setting that way. There's a professor that has a curriculum that's set and they're giving it to the class that's enrolled in the class. And everyone in that class is about the same, you know, relatively the same point in their, their educational journey, their college sophomores, for example.

That's certainly the frame of mind I had when I was in my earliest years and developing my skills as a teacher. The charter school that I taught at was taking, I think, some very refreshing, interesting chances on how they approached teaching certain topics. For instance, the school, they had, it was a 6 through 12 school.

And after I had been teaching there for a year or two, they switched their model so that every class and every subject was mixed age range across the entire range of the school.

Holy smokes.

Yeah, which was a really, really interesting challenge. At first, I'm like, how could this possibly work? I was teaching every class music theory, and I had students in the class that were seniors that had some real facility with terminology and ideas, and then sixth graders that had never had a conversation about music at all, or had very limited vocabulary to discuss it.

And I initially just couldn't wrap my head around it. But after a year or two doing it, I started to see some really interesting angles to that scenario, where it's like, okay, my senior can describe what he's... he can describe the terminology of what's happening in this passage of music.

But this, you know, the seventh grader in the class is hearing something, hearing something really compelling, they just don't have the words for it. So can I... how can I encourage, you know, this this peer learning mentorship model within that the age range of the group?

Like the senior can share their experience and their terminology with the younger student. And at the same time, they can learn from that student. But like, can you understand what that student is trying to say?

And can you help them find the words for it? Which is, of course, extremely educational for everybody at every part of this equation, including me. I was learning so much by observing this and working within that model and just seeing this incredible growth from the students.

Yeah, I sit here and think, if you had me teach from sixth to twelfth grade, I would be, what am I... My initial reaction would be, no. So I'm glad you're more creative than I.

What was the most impactful thing you took from that experience? I don't want to put words in your mouth, but it seems like the peer mentor or the peer model was quite instructive or quite essential for your success there.

I think it helped me to think about all of my teaching from a more seminar-like perspective. And it's made me, I think one of the biggest changes it's had in my, one of the biggest impacts it's had in my teaching philosophy is to try to draw out the best from everybody from their knowledge and their experience and to have everyone being a contributor to the learning experience as much as possible, rather than me running a class as a lecture of like, now I'm bestowing upon you the information that we're going to learn today. Like, for instance, one of the topics I teach is music theory.

And the practice of music theory is about listening to music and trying to find words to discuss it, to describe it, and to understand it. And that process takes questioning, and it takes listening and re-examining. And that process is inquisitive in nature, right?

So if it's taught as a matter of fact that I think that that can be... Some concepts are relatively black and white. That's a C major chord.

This is how you spell it. But to instill a sense of inquisitiveness in the students, which is one of my main goals, like I try to organize the class in a way that it's like posing questions and can we together find the solutions? Or even ahead of that, what kind of questions do we need to ask about this in the first place to probe it in the right way to find insight?

And in the sense of trying to create an environment where I'm not coming to the students like I have the answers. I'm inviting all of us to explore the question together and then see how can I help guide you to some new ways to discuss or find nuance or insight in the music.

So not to put words in your mouth, but leading them closer towards enlightenment.

Yeah, or like another analogy in the music field, a lot of implied instruction on an instrument. It's a mentorship relationship, or maybe I don't have exactly the right word for it, but you're studying a trade with a master that's just further down the road than you, but they're still on their own path of lifelong growth and learning, right? And so for instance, someone's thinking violin, studying violin, they'll take lessons with a master violinist, which we have here in the School of Music, of course.

And I try to think of classroom teaching similarly. Like it's not a prescription, like learn this and then tell me what you learned. It's more like sort of as a guide.

I'm still learning, I'm still exploring, and I'm trying to help you explore the same way.

So very much mentor protege.

Yeah, yeah.

Very cool. And I draw a lot of parallels, come from a sporting background, coach and future coach, if you will. So I really like that model.

I also find that it helps the students in the class come alive when they feel like, I'm part of the exploration of what's happening here. Like, it's, I think when it's, the more a classroom can feel like a one-way street of just giving information, the easier it is for the student to disconnect, as if they're like watching or observing. But if I can be regularly asking them questions, seeking their feedback, looking for a lot of back and forth, I think that keeps engagement running deep and keeps them feeling like they are part of the process, they are part of a process of discovery.

And they are co-creating the knowledge.

Right, right.

So switching gears a little. In your view, what does it mean to excel in your role?

Yeah, it's a good question. And I think it relates to some of the things we were talking about. I think first and foremost, it's empowering the success of others, particularly in my context as a faculty, that's, you know, students and faculty peers.

Like in the classroom, I want to empower the student's success. And it's not just through the knowledge. I want to give them like, if it's a music theory course, there is a certain curriculum that I want them to learn.

I want them to have a sensitivity towards analytical thinking. I want them to learn this particular chord or form, terminology that is part of the course content. But more broadly, I want them to think inquisitively about music and to listen with open ears, to have a desire to understand what they're hearing, and to just have a spark to want to know more.

I'd say that's almost more important than any of the specific details of the course content itself, because that's going to shape them for whatever they do in the rest of their life. So much about, I mean, when you sign up for a music career, you're very intensely focused on that craft, but so many of the skills involved transfer to whatever sort of career path you're going to pursue, whatever you wind up doing as a career, and through your hobbies and personal relationships, there's so much insight that's transferable. So when I think about excelling as a teacher, it's equipping them with all of that or as much of that as possible, not something that goes way beyond the course content details.

And further about empowering the success of others like in their research and creative activity, too. Music's inherently very collaborative by nature. Like I'm a composer, collaboration is like the bread and butter of what I do, even though composition often feels like a solitary activity, doing it by myself in a room.

But the end goal and the thing you're working towards through the whole process is being in a room with other musicians, creating music, and having a collaborative process of building that piece together. Not just giving them the score and saying, here, play this, but putting my music in front of them and going, hey, here's what I've got so far. Any comments, any feedback.

And often inviting the performers I'm working with to help shape the piece, the music. Parallels what I was saying earlier about teaching, collective ownership of the experience and growth. So I try to model my own creative and scholarly work on that sort of bedrock.

And I guess this also relates to one thing I said earlier, but I think being, to me, a big tenet of success is bringing the best out of everyone that you're working with and whatever setting that you're working with them in. And to try to make, you know, if I am in a class or a committee meeting or a rehearsal or performance, I want everyone that I work with to come away feeling more excited to do more of that, whether it's going and reading their homework or going and practicing the piece we're working on or even working on a committee project that we're, that seems like a mundane task that we're working on together. Like, can we, you know, hopefully we can find a shared sense of vision for that project and leave a little bit excited to move it further down the road.

How do you do that? How do you leave people better than you found them and get them to be excited about those things?

It's a good question. I think the most basic element of that, that I found for me is just being as enthusiastic as possible about whatever I'm doing all the time. The easiest way to explain that is like I, so if I have a perspective student, I'd talk to people that are thinking about going into music for college and they're always asked, should I do this?

I'm thinking about this and this other career path, what are some things I should be thinking about? And the first thing I always tell all of them is the number one requirement for pursuing career in music should be that you absolutely love it. You need to love doing it and be willing to pour your heart and soul into it.

And that certainly was the case for myself. I was considering a number of different science fields when I was in high school, and it was music wound up winning out in that pursuit because I just loved it so much and I've always loved creating music, talking about music, sharing music with others. So in the classroom, whatever the conversation is, I want it to be evident to the class that I really enjoy this.

And not just certain topics. Like my particular area of specialty is 20th century and 21st century music, like more modern contemporary music. It's probably the music I'm most passionate and excited about.

So when I teach that topic, I'm just kind of beaming the whole time. I love seeing how things work and how they're put together and then helping other people see that and have kind of lightbulb moments, when it changes how they hear a piece. But I think it's just as important when you're teaching a fundamentals class that is maybe often perceived as boring because you are learning basics of the language.

Okay, and it takes practice and repetition of simple ideas. Like I have to spell basic chord, I have to practice spelling that chord, practice spelling the scale, make sure I have the key signature right. But even that, if you're enthusiastic about how learning those basic skills opens all sorts of doors to fascinating and exciting points of study in the future, I think that the students can really see it and they pick up on it.

And if you are excited about it, that excitement is going to rub off on them no matter what the topic, no matter how complex it is. So I think that's certainly one of the key elements of it for me.

So speaking of key elements, what unique qualities or perspectives do you bring to your role as an educator?

Yeah, good question. I think that enthusiasm is one of them. That's definitely one of the...

You stole your own thunder.

Yeah, I rely on that a lot. I want to bring my A-game enthusiasm to every class, every meeting, even just at 8 a.m., I want to bring it... I feel like that's one of the best things I can give to the students is that content that packages in a way that clearly says, I really care about this.

Then I guess going a little deeper than that, as a teacher of composition and music theory, I think of one of my goals as helping students to unlock their imagination. Teaching composition is hard. It's really, really hard because the breadth of styles that the composers are working in is so incredibly wide that there's no prescription for it.

People get into music, into creating music through more avenues now than ever before from learning an instrument when they were little to now maybe a middle school student picks up some software where they don't read any traditional music notation, but they're able to create music through some clicking in some modules or working in an audio workstation. It just means that there is not just one method you can use that applies evenly to all people that want to create music. And I found that my philosophy teaching composition has become to help every composer become the best version of themselves as possible.

So when I'm working with the composer, I'm trying to learn... My first question is, what are they trying to do? What is their voice?

What do they want to say? And then when I have some understanding of that, how can I help them say that as effectively as possible? And a lot of that comes down to helping them see the inherent possibilities in their ideas that they just haven't tapped into yet.

So they'll show me... They'll bring it in and show work that they're working on, and we'll look at a couple of ideas, break it down, help them see the building blocks that they're working with, and then help them see those building blocks from different angles to see the potential for how they can craft them into a bigger hole while staying true to their personal style and what they want to say, because I do want to be careful not to impose my own stylistic preferences on them. But then I think that also...

I mean, I used to think of that more as a compositional thing, but then that approaches how I teach theory as well. It's like, well, you're going to play this piece of music. Say you're not composing, but you're just learning a piano sonata.

So they'll show me... They'll bring it in and show work that they're working on, and we'll look at a couple of ideas, break it down, help them see the building blocks that they're working with, and then help them see those building blocks from different angles to see the potential for how they can craft them into a bigger hole while staying true to their personal style and what they want to say, because I do want to be careful not to impose my own stylistic preferences on them. But then I think that also...

I mean, I used to think of that more as a compositional thing, but then that approaches how I teach theory as well. It's like, well, you're going to play this piece of music. Say you're not composing, but you're just learning a piano sonata.

I'm wrestling with them too, just in different ways. You know, we're all on this full lifetime journey of growth as an artist. So, you know, really try to practice what I preach there.

So to this point in your career, what are you most proud of?

I'd say, well, there's several things. You know, at the moment, something I'm really proud of is the studio of composers we've cultivated here at JMU. We currently have about 18, and it tends to be somewhere 18 to 20 or so.

And helped build a really caring, supportive, and creative community that really builds each other up. You know, something I'm proud of, as simple as it is in our composition studio here, is that the composers frequently play each other's works, and they write music for each other, and they're excited to do that. So they are really driven to lift each other up, which just makes the whole community better.

And then within that studio, there's a great deal of stylistic diversity, too, and that diversity makes the artistic vibe in the class very rich and exciting.

What drives you to continue growing and thriving in your role?

I would say, I mean, kind of continuing on the same theme, the students and the community and new opportunities for collaboration keep me going. I've been really, really blessed. We have such an incredible faculty here in the School of Music, and I've been really fortunate to be able to collaborate with almost all of them in some way, shape, or form, either by writing them pieces or performing with them or working with them on curricular or scholarly projects.

When I go to compose a piece, I'm trying to fuel this on-going desire to challenge myself. I've become increasingly aware of where my creative comfort zone is, and every artist relies on their comfort zone to some extent. I try not to let myself be too comfortable in it.

And when I start a piece, I feel like I'm looking for a couple ideas to focus on the piece, just a couple, but I often have a lot of ideas. So when I finish a piece, there's usually like a bunch of ideas left on the table, and I'm already thinking about, well, what piece is that idea going to make its way into? So I feel like there's always some ideas that are tantalizing to explore for the next piece, which also kind of keeps me curious to go, well, that idea could be really cool in this context for this instrument.

Hey, do you want to work on a piece together? That sort of thing.

Very good. Do you have any hobbies or personal interests that bring fresh energy or insights into your work?

Yeah, I got a couple. One is playing strategy games. Do a lot of strategy games with friends and family, and even just board games of varying degrees of complexity.

But I feel like that it's fun, but it also keeps me sharp, and it taps into the same kind of thinking that, or adjacent thinking to what I'm doing when I'm analyzing and trying to find the path through my own composition. You're given a set of rules and you're trying to find the right path through those rules based off the situation, that the game presents you, and that helps me practice that type of thinking still also having fun. During the pandemic, my wife and I stumbled into Lego as a hobby, which we just hadn't done much of before, but found that to be a fun, just kind of relaxing thing to do, but it's also taking a bunch of small pieces and building them into a bigger whole.

So it's following instructions, but it's still, there's an element of it that's appreciating someone's creativity and design and how they went from the micro to the macro, which is often how composing a piece feels, too.

How do you balance your personal life with your faculty responsibilities?

I would say sometimes poorly, but I'm working on it. I find that I have difficulty putting down a project if it's not completely finished, which can lead to me kind of working obsessively or sometimes excessively on it. Composing piece can often feel that way, but it can be like a committee project or a new course prep can also be like that.

So I've been increasingly aware of it, of needing to try to find a boundary, some healthy boundaries over the last few years. Just over the last academic year, the College of Visual and Performing Arts undertook this major workload equity project initiative. And I was really excited to be a part of that, to really kind of take a deep dive at what our faculty workloads look like.

One of the themes that regularly recurred throughout the discussion was the passion tax or the idea that, you know, like we're all here doing this job because we love what we do. And because we love it, that can lead us to, you know, putting huge amounts of time into it that can often encroach on the boundaries of your personal life. And one of the main goals of that, that whole year-long process became trying to help us understand where the boundaries of our workload currently are and where we like to see them be.

Which is, you know, what we found across the board, like that we're all working really, really hard and probably all feel like we could work a little bit less to find or achieve a healthier work-life balance. And that, that process is really insightful, I think both for our school and for me personally. I came out of it this year with a clearer sense of like, okay, I should take on a certain number of service responsibilities, and then it's okay for me to say I'm full.

And that if I don't do that, I'll very easily tip over into having too much. And then, and then it's always the, the my, you know, the personal life that that that time that suffers from that. And I'm bad about saying no to those things too.

So I'm trying to get a little bit better about finding a healthy boundary of where to draw the line and then being just open and honest and communicative with with the rest of the community about where that line is.

Your work on the service and the process through y'all that y'all went through did not go unnoticed.

Yes, right.

So that was very helpful to see the process. And for me, that's been really helpful in having just clearly, objectively having standards, essentially like, OK, once I hit this standard, I know I don't have to say yes to any more committees or whatnot because I've hit the standard that is that is satisfactory or exceeds or wherever I need to be, if you will. So that's very, very helpful, not just for me, but for all sorts of folks.

So thank you for that work.

Yeah. And just to have more agency in it is, it makes a huge difference. Because if you have a hard time saying no, I mean, you're just going to keep saying yes.

Exactly.

And you don't know where it's okay to say no, or you don't feel like it is okay to say no. And giving the faculty more agency in that equation makes a big difference.

And I think the clarity part is really needed. Because I think some places it's well, how do I know what's enough? Well, you'll know.

That's not very clear. And that doesn't help for somebody who may not feel compelled to say no, or they feel compelled to say yes, and they're saying yes, and yes, and yes, and then they're way above the standard.

Right.

So what strategies do you use to try to ensure that your personal life and faculty responsibilities do not overwhelm one another?

I'd say I'm still finding my path through this. But one thing I found helps me is to intentionally schedule non-work activities. In particular for me, like exercise.

If I actually put it into my calendar as a block that looks like a work obligation to me visually, that I'm more likely to treat it that way, something that's non-negotiable, that I am like, okay, I have to do that. So I have to make time for that for myself. That's helped.

I'm getting better at it. Like sometimes I put it in there and I still let it slip if something else is more pressing. But that's one thing that's helped a lot.

And I've attempted, still only attempted, but trying to like set a time of the day when I stop doing any sort of work, which I just usually been very bad at because like creative work in particular, it feels like it never stops, like you're always thinking about it. And sometimes, like with composing, sometimes the idea will come at 10:30 p.m. and then I just have to work on it for a while. So at least trying to get a little bit better about, okay, well maybe after this time, I'm not going to look my email anymore.

Still got a ways to go on that. But those are a couple of strategies that I'm trying to work in to help with that situation.

If you could go back in time and meet yourself before your first day at JMU, what advice would you give yourself and why?

I think first and foremost, I'd say keep being yourself. I think particularly when you're a new faculty member, it can feel like there's a lot of varying expectations for who you're going to be to a lot of different people, whether it's your students or your peers or the administration. And I think being yourself, staying true to yourself, no matter what the context is really important.

I tell myself keep being enthusiastic, because I've found that that just always pays dividends. Keep taking collaborative opportunities that present themselves, because that really is kind of the lifeblood of what I do in the school of music. And just to continue to value and support the people in your community.

Because at the end of the day, a lot of what we're doing is community building within the school. And when the students go off and into whatever path they're going to follow in life, in their careers, they're going to take what they learned here in our community and use that to build their next community too. So, yeah, those are all things I value a lot.

Wonderful. So we appreciate your time and thank you for being with us today. Listeners, again, this was Dr. Eric Guinivan.

Thank you.

Thanks a lot.