Scholarships Source

Sample Academic Cover Letters

502 W. Main Street #221
Urbana, IL 61801
October 20, 2003
Music History Search Committee
Indiana University of Pennsylvania
422 South 11th Street
Indiana, PA 15705

Dear Members of the Search Committee:

I am writing in response to your advertisement for the Assistant Professor of Music History position at Indiana University of Pennsylvania, as advertised in the Chronicle of Higher Education. I am currently a Ph.D. student in Musicology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and will complete my degree
in May 2004. I respectfully submit this letter of application, for I believe my experiences and commitment to teaching make me well qualified to meet the needs of IUP’s dynamic program.
As a teaching assistant at the University of Illinois, I have gained valuable experience leading undergraduate discussion sections for both music majors and non-majors. In addition to classroom instruction, I have advised students on appropriate research topics and edited and evaluated their work. Based on student evaluations, I have earned the Graduate Teaching Award for every semester that I have taught and have been listed four times among the top ten percent of teachers rated at the University of Illinois. I also co-created a public Music Appreciation course entitled Music for All, which attracted the interest of concertgoers of all ages and backgrounds. I am firmly dedicated to the education of music students as well as general audiences
and eagerly welcome an opportunity to develop similar programs at IUP.
My course work has covered a wide range of topics in the various musical eras. My research, comparing Beethoven’s symphonies with the more modern compositions of late-twentieth century American composers, has provided me with the opportunity to draw connections between the different periods and to communicate
difficult concepts clearly to students of all levels. I am committed to an interdisciplinary approach to scholarship and teaching, and all of my courses are structured with this in mind. Rather than simply lecturing to a class, I strive to cultivate an interactive environment in which students can express themselves freely while learning to engage with the past in meaningful ways. I emphasize critical thinking and the need to consider music within its larger social, historical, and intellectual contexts. IUP takes great pride in its training of young scholars, and I feel that it is my responsibility to uphold these standards and to encourage and challenge students to work up to their potential, in hopes that their experiences in my classes will teach them far more than the history of music.
In addition to the standard period surveys, I am fully prepared to develop courses on opera history, Lieder, music and rhetoric (with special emphasis on the Baroque period), Twentieth century music, Romanticism, and music and the visual arts.
I welcome an opportunity to discuss my teaching and future research projects with you. I have enclosed my CV, and you will be receiving my letters of recommendation under separate cover. I look forward to hearing from you soon.
Sincerely,
Mary Blake

taken from: www.grad.uiuc.edu/careerservices