Indiana Wesleyan University’s Music Therapy program recently converted a portion of Center School, an academic building on IWU’s residential campus, into a music therapy clinic that is expected to open in September 2017. The clinic will provide free music therapy services to those in the local community and will be managed by Rebecca Barnard, associate professor of Music Therapy.
Music therapy is a healthcare field that uses music in a prescribed manner as a treatment for rehabilitating, maintaining and improving the lives of individuals with physical, intellectual and emotional disabilities.
“We’re using music to solve non-music goals in things like speech and fine and gross motor skills,” said Barnard. “For example, if an child needs to work on hand function, it’s a lot more fun to pick up a shaker and play music than it is to simply pick up a spoon.”
The music therapy clinic at IWU will be a teaching clinic for students in the IWU Music Therapy program. Students in their junior and senior years will have the opportunity to be involved in leading one-on-one sessions with clients while under the observation of Barnard. Students working in the clinic will receive practicum credit that will go towards their 180 hours of required fieldwork.
IWU’s Music Therapy program, established in 2014, is housed within the Division of Music and is fully accredited by the American Music Therapy Association and the National Association of Music. The program prepares students for the health profession that uses music and musical experiences to maintain and improve a person’s functioning level in a variety of health domains.
For more information about the IWU Music Therapy program, click here.
