Joe Shively

Associate Professor of Music Education
Senior Associate Dean, College of Arts and Sciences

Contact: [email protected]
(248) 370-2140

Joe Shively currently serves as Senior Associate Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences and Associate Professor of Music Education. He has taught a wide range of music education courses including instrumental music education methods, marching band methods, contemporary trends in music education, and research in music education, and previously served on the faculties of Kansas State University and the University of North Carolina at Greensboro.

He holds degrees in music education from Limestone College and the University of Illinois. While at Illinois, Dr. Shively served as Associate Editor of the Bulletin of the Council for Research in Music Education, Coordinator of Band Programs for the Office of Continuing Education and Public Service in Music, and taught music education courses.

Before beginning graduate study, he served as Director of Bands at Lewisville High School and Middle School and Clover High School in South Carolina. Dr. Shively has served as an adjudicator, arranger, clinician, drill designer, and program consultant for concert bands, jazz bands, marching bands, and orchestras throughout the United States. He is active as a conductor and clinician with middle school and high school bands, as well as honor bands, throughout Michigan. He also serves as a regular guest conductor with the Oakland University Wind Symphony and Oakland University Symphonic Band.

His publications on constructivist learning approaches include chapters in Dimensions of Musical Learning and Teaching (National Association for Music Education: MENC), Musical Understanding, (Canadian Music Educators Association), and Questioning the Music Education Paradigm, also published by CMEA, as well as articles in Arts Education Policy Review, The Media Journal of Music Education, Kansas Music Review, and Michigan Music Educator. Most recently, he contributed a chapter titled “Navigating Music Teacher Education Toward Humane Ends,” for Humane Music Education for the Common Good (Indiana University Press, 2020). 

Additionally, Dr. Shively currently serves on the Board of Advisors for the National Conference on Percussion Pedagogy, helping to develop the National Standards for Percussion Equipment and Facilities and the Marimba Performance Standards. Having made presentations across the US, as well as in Canada, Japan, and Uganda, his areas of interests include constructivist learning and teaching, instrumental music, teacher education, and philosophy.