Marvelene Moore, professor emerita in UT’s School of Music, will be recognized as this year’s Trailblazer Award honoree at 5:30 p.m. Tuesday, March 21, at the Howard H. Baker Jr. Center for Public Policy.
Each year, the Trailblazer Series honors African Americans in the UT community who are considered trailblazers in their disciplines or within the fields of diversity, inclusion, and social justice.
This year’s award ceremony will include an interview, Q&A session, and reception. The interview and Q&A session begin at 5:30 p.m. in the Baker Center’s Toyota Auditorium, and the reception will follow at 6:30 p.m. in the rotunda. This event is free and open to the public.
Moore, who held the James A. Cox Professor endowed chair from 2002 to 2004, worked at UT for 36 years. She is an expert in classroom music for students in kindergarten through eighth grade. She received the Lowell Mason Fellow Award, the highest honor in music education, and was inducted into the CEHHS Educators Hall of Honor in 2014.
She has served as a clinician and guest conductor in 44 states and has presented at International Society for Music Education conferences across the world. She chaired the biennial National Symposium on Multicultural Music.
Moore is currently a member of the board of directors of the International Society of Music Education, representing the United States on the Commission for Music in Schools and Teacher Education. She has published extensively for Pearson Education and the National Association for Music Education.
The Trailblazer Series is sponsored by UT’s Commission for Blacks and the Black Student Union.
Past Trailblazer speakers include Theotis Robinson, the first African American undergraduate at UT; Rita Geier, a lawyer who championed efforts to desegregate Tennessee’s higher education system; Mark Dean, inventor, professor, and holder of three of IBM’s original nine PC patents; Valisia LeKae, Grammy- and Tony-nominated actress and singer and spokesperson for the National Ovarian Cancer Coalition; Michael Nettles, senior vice president at the Educational Testing Service and Edmund W. Gordon Chair of ETS’s Policy Evaluation and Research Center; Don Frieson, executive vice president of operations for Sam’s Club and one of the namesakes of UT’s Frieson Black Cultural Center; Cynthia Fleming, historian and one of UT’s first black women faculty members; and Michael Blackwell, former dean of the College of Veterinary Medicine, former chief of staff in the US Office of the Surgeon General, and Distinguished Service Medal honoree.