Dr. Jennifer Vannatta-Hall

Associate Director

Dr. Jennifer Vannatta-Hall
(615) 898-2487
Room 109, Saunders Fine Arts Building (SFA)
MTSU Box 47, Murfreesboro, TN 37132

Degree Information

  • EDD, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (2010)
  • MA, Middle Tennessee State University (2004)
  • BM, Middle Tennessee State University (1998)

Areas of Expertise

K-12 Vocal/General Music Education
Early Childhood Music Education
Orff-Schulwerk
World Music Pedagogy
Modern Band/Little Kids Rock

Biography

Jennifer Vannatta-Hall is the Associate Director for the School of Music and Professor of Music Education. She teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in music education. She received a Bachelor of Music degree from Middle Tennessee State University in 1998. She taught pre-K through eighth grade general music and directed choirs in Rutherford County for two years. She then served as middle school general music teacher for the next three years in Franklin Special School District, where she ...

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Jennifer Vannatta-Hall is the Associate Director for the School of Music and Professor of Music Education. She teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in music education. She received a Bachelor of Music degree from Middle Tennessee State University in 1998. She taught pre-K through eighth grade general music and directed choirs in Rutherford County for two years. She then served as middle school general music teacher for the next three years in Franklin Special School District, where she conducted choirs and led the musical theatre program for fifth through eighth graders. She also served as associate director of the Tennessee Choral Academy, conducting five choirs ranging in age from eight to eighteen.

After teaching in the public schools for five years, Vannatta-Hall returned to MTSU and graduated with a Master of Arts in Music Education in 2004. She was hired as full-time faculty for the MTSU School of Music for the 2004-2005 school year, where she taught music methods courses and conducted the MTSU Women's Chorale. She then completed her doctoral coursework in music education at the University of Illinois and graduated with a Doctor of Education degree in August 2010. She is certified through the master level of the Orff-Schulwerk approach to music education, the Smithsonian Institute's World Music Pedagogy, and Modern Band/Little Kids Rock.

Vannatta-Hall has presented workshops and conference sessions all over the United States and was a visiting professor of music at Hangzhou Normal University in China in March 2019. She frequently conducts and adjudicates choral festivals. Her research interests include early childhood music teacher education and K-12 general music. Her book, Music Teaching Self-Efficacy in Early Childhood Teacher Education, was published in 2013.

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