Steinhardt School Required Courses

Foundations school-wide requirement (6 points)

Each student will be required to take 6 points of foundations work. Steinhardt School policy dictates that the foundations courses must be taken during the first 24 points of doctoral study. The foundations requirement includes graduate level courses that are designed to broaden students' access to knowledge outside of their area of specialization. To this end, courses are considered foundational when they (1) Provide broad, basic content that is not limited to a single profession, and are outside the student's specialization; (2) Strongly rely on current scholarship from the arts, the humanities, the sciences, and the social sciences; and (3) Have wide applicability to common issues of the students' specialization and profession.

By advisement students may select courses offered throughout the School that meet these criteria.

Specialized Research Methodology (3 points)

E85.2130 Research in Music and Music Education

Research in Music and Music Education provides students with a comprehensive investigation of research in music, the various research paradigms and methods. In this course, doctoral students develop Topic Proposals.

Cognate Study (6 points)

Cognate studies are graduate courses taken outside the student's department that are relevant to the area of research. They may be taken in Steinhardt or any of the university's other graduate schools where permitted, such as the Graduate School of Arts and Science, the Wagner Graduate School of Public Service, and the Tisch School of the Arts.

Each student is required to complete 6 points of cognate course work outside of the student's program. Cognate courses are related to and supportive of the studentÕs area of specialization. Students, in consultation with their adviser, choose cognate courses that contribute to their professional development by filling gaps in some areas and securing greater depth in others.

Content and Dissertation Proposal Seminars (6 points)

E85.3060 Doctoral Symposium in Music Technology

The Doctoral Symposium in Music Technology focuses on current issues in the field and brings to bear various research methodologies in reviewing current literature and developing novel approaches to the underlying problems.

E85.3097 Dissertation Proposal Seminar

In the Dissertation Proposal Seminar students receive dissertation advisement coupled with seminars in which students present their works in progress and discuss research problems. Current researchers in the performing arts are invited to share research and writing.

Research Requirements (12 points)

Music Courses

E85.2599 Digital Signal Theory I followed by
E85.2613 3D Audio or E85.2623 Music Information Retrieval

In addition to the core seminar courses, students will be encouraged to meet informally on a regular basis with program faculty in order to exchange ideas on research topics and methods, developments in the field, career goals, and the like.

Courant Institute Courses
All students are required to take at least three courses (12 credits) in Mathematics and Computer Science, to be selected from the list of available courses at the Courant Institute. These courses may be either research or specialization electives, by advisement. Examples of possible research courses include:

Mathematics
G63.2901 Basic Probability
G22.2112 Scientific Computing
G22.2420 Numerical Methods
G63.2962 Mathematical Statistics
 

Computer Science
G22.2110 Programming Languages
G22.2433 Database Systems
G22.1170 Fundamental Algorithms
G22.2880 User interfaces

Specialization Electives (12 points)

Music Courses
Each student will select, under advisement, courses that will further their particular specialization in the field of music technology. To this end, the student must take a variety of courses that provide both breadth and depth of exposure to the specialized field. This may require additional study beyond the minimum point requirement. Once the student has chosen a specialized field in consultation with his or her adviser, he or she may select course work from among such offerings as the following:

Music
E85.2039 Contemporary Music
E85.2024 Seminar in Theory / Special Topics
E85.2046 Music Criticism
E85.2050 Music of Nonwestern Civilizations

Music Technology
E85.2047 Advanced Computer Music Composition
E85.2604 Audio for Games and Immersive Environments
E85.2048 Scoring for Film and Multimedia
E85.2608 Java Music Systems

Courant Institute Courses
Electives in computer science and mathematics will bolster individual specializations in digital signal processing, machine learning, and multimedia development. The more advanced and specialized courses will be chosen in consultation with an adviser on the basis of the student’s central interests in music technology. This may require additional study beyond the minimum point requirement. The following are examples of courses that would be appropriate for various specializations in music technology:

Computer Science
G22.2560 Artificial Intelligence
G22.2565 Machine Learning
G22.3033-001 Multimedia
G22.2271 Computer Vision

Mathematics
G63.2490 Partial Differential Equations I
G63.2563 Harmonic Analysis
G63.2650.003 Wavelets and Time-Frequency Analysis
G63.2840.001 Introduction to Information Theory and the Application to Statistical Prediction

Teaching Requirement

Doctoral Candidates are expected to complete at least one semester as a teaching assistant working with a full-time faculty member in preparing and teaching a class, as well as providing assistance to the students in that class. The student will further be expected to fulfill at least one semester of independent teaching after completing their experience as a teaching assistant. This experience is intended both to prepare students for teaching careers in higher education, as well as to further foster the mentoring relationship between the candidate and the faculty with whom they will be working on curricular development and teaching.

Doctoral Candidacy Exams

Doctoral degree candidacy in Music Technology is based on an oral examination and a written examination. The student will be required to take the doctoral candidacy exam after completing no more than 30 points toward the degree.