The Pedagogy Arts Collective Helps Berklee Faculty Stay Ahead of the Curve

Associate Professor Enrique Gonzalez Müller (EGM) has a tendency to dive deeply into everything he does. He’s now a decade into his career as a faculty member in the Music Production and Engineering Department (MP&E) after a 13-year stint as a globe-trotting engineer, mixer, producer, and arranger. He worked in the studio with major-label artists such as Metallica, the Dave Matthews Band, Nine Inch Nails, and Tina Turner, as well as with international acts, before focusing on education. He takes teaching seriously and has studied psychology of education at Boston University, pedagogy at Purdue Global, leadership at Harvard, and more.

A year and a half ago, EGM began pouring his efforts into founding the Pedagogy Arts Collective (PAC) at Berklee. A vehicle for sharing both cutting-edge and time-tested ideas on teaching, PAC offers seminars with experts from prestigious institutions and outstanding in-house faculty presenters as part of Berklee’s ongoing mission to prepare students for careers in the music industry.

“I was exerting so much energy that I began feeling things weren’t sustainable, which propelled me to study how to make pedagogy more efficient.”

— Enrique Gonzalez Müller

Growing up in Caracas, Venezuela, EGM was passionate about music and came to Berklee, where he earned his degree majoring in music production and engineering and in electronic production and design. Upon graduating, in 1999, he started his career in Sausalito, California, at The Plant Studios. As his professional reputation grew, he began receiving offers to work in Venezuela and Italy. Notwithstanding his success in the studio, he sought new inspiration and began taking psychology courses at the University of California, Berkeley, and thinking about education.

A chance meeting with a professor from Berklee brought an invitation to return to the college as a visiting artist. “I felt a surge of passion and creativity from the students and realized I had missed some of that in my work,” EGM says. Not long afterward, he was hired to fill a faculty position in MP&E.

While EGM possessed deep production knowledge, he felt trepidation about his teaching skills. “I felt a lot of stress over trying to do the very best to train my students for their careers,” he says. “But I was exerting so much energy that I began feeling things weren’t sustainable, which propelled me to study how to make pedagogy more efficient.”

Working with Roya Hu and Robert Lagueux in the Office of Faculty Development, EGM developed his idea to form the Pedagogy Arts Collective to help faculty members who, like him, have incredible résumés as music professionals, but want to strengthen their training as educators. He proposed a pilot program involving casual meetings with speakers offering presentations and follow-up discussions.

EGM's aspiration is for PAC to “serve as a robust, pan-college nucleus for all faculty and staff to collaboratively explore, share, and deepen our knowledge of innovative and effective pedagogy, educational psychology, and technology. PAC would help onboard new faculty and staff as well as provide continued support and thought-provoking stimulus for experienced educators in the ever-evolving pursuit of pedagogy innovation.”

For the inaugural spring 2022 lecture series, EGM enlisted Berklee faculty members to address such topics as how to succeed as an educator, how course design can help prepare students for careers, and what to consider for meaningful and effective grading. For the fall 2022 series, faculty presenters chose their own topics. The embrace of PAC by faculty and staff from Berklee’s Boston, Valencia, and New York campuses and Berklee Online prompted him to invite presenters from outside institutions. The nine-week spring 2023 series included Appalachian State University’s Lillian Nave, who addressed culturally relevant pedagogy; Stanford University’s Drew Schrader, who spoke about strategies to authentically engage students; and Harvard University’s David Dockterman, who offered insights on how the brain changes as specialists gain expertise and ways to best support novices on their journeys to mastery.

Assistant Professor David Cardona says that PAC has been an important resource for his growth as an educator: “It’s a space to share knowledge, techniques, disciplines, and details pertaining to teaching and learning. The sessions and discussions have enabled me to design robust curricula that keep accessibility and diversity at heart.”

The PAC revisits proven educational concepts while also staying abreast of innovations, such as how to use principles of Universal Design for Learning (UDL), which helps faculty members create a learning environment that accommodates the needs of Berklee’s diverse student population.

“UDL has raised awareness of the great and rich diversity of learners we encounter in and outside of our classrooms, EGM says. “Understanding and anticipating how to prepare for the various ways in which our students capture, retain, and creatively use information not only enriches the teaching and learning experience, but bolsters empathy and compassion, creating a unified sense of community.”

The nine-week series planned for fall 2023 will take up another evolving issue: artificial intelligence. “This advance in technology isn’t going away and for a lot of us, it’s new and uncertain, EGM says. “Faculty members need to embrace it or our students—who are fearless about jumping into the deep end of the pool—won’t be well served.” By keeping faculty ahead of the pedagogical curve, EGM and the PAC are helping students make that leap.”