Matthew L. Garrett, Professor of Music Education and Director of the University Center for Innovation in Teaching and Education (UCITE), joined the faculty at Case Western Reserve University in 2009. In the Department of Music, he teaches graduate music education students and facilitates student teaching seminars with licensure students. Garrett has directed the UCITE team since 2017, drawing on his expansive background in educational pedagogy and over 25 years of classroom teaching experience to help faculty, staff, and students explore the art and science of teaching and learning.
Garrett’s research interests research interests focus primarily on LGBTQ issues in music education. He co-authored Honoring Trans and Gender-Expansive [TGE] Students in Music Education (Oxford University Press) with Joshua Palkki in 2021. Together, they encouraged music educators to honor gender diverse persons through ethically and pedagogically sound practices by highlighting the narratives and experiences of TGE musicians. Garrett recently completed a chapter, Queering Music Teacher Training for the forthcoming Oxford Handbook of Gender and Queer Studies in Music Education. His scholarship has been published in Journal of Research in Music Education, Research Studies in Music Education, Bulletin for the Council of Research in Music Education, UPDATE: Applications of Research in Music Education, International Journal of Research in Choral Singing, Research Perspectives in Music Education, Choral Journal, TRIAD: The Official Publication of the Ohio Music Education Association, Florida Music Director and Journal of the Society for American Music. He frequently serves as a guest peer reviewer of scholarship related to gender and sexual diversity in music education contexts for national and international journals.
Garrett is an advisory board member for Oxford Intersections: Gender Justice, a new concept in interdisciplinary academic publishing from OUP, “Gender Justice will feature work that shines a light on issues and concepts related to gender expansion and liberation in various global contexts.” At CWRU, he has served on the University Lesbian/Gay/Bisexual/Transgender/Queer/ Ally (LGBTQA) Committee, and he was a founding member of an interdisciplinary LGBTQ Research Group. Garrett has been honored with a CWRU Prism Award for outstanding contributions to the campus LGBTQ community. He recently served as a planning committee member for the 2024 International QMUE 5 Symposium for LGBTQ Studies and Music Education at the University of Illinois, Chicago.
Garrett has been interviewed regarding his research on developing critical thinking skills for articles in the national music education journal Teaching Music. His strategies for incorporating critical thinking skills in choral rehearsal environments were published as part of a hybrid print/online music text series from Hal Leonard and McGraw Hill Education, Voices in Concert. He has been nominated twice for the CWRU Wittke Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching.
Originally from South Carolina, Garrett holds a Bachelor of Music Education and a PhD in Choral Music Education and Conducting from Florida State University. He earned a Master of Music degree in Conducting from Boston University, where he was awarded Music Division Honors in Choral Conducting. Before joining the Case Western Reserve faculty, Garrett was a music educator in Central Florida and Southeast Massachusetts public schools at the middle and high school levels. While in Boston, he was the conductor of the Handel and Haydn Society Children’s Choruses. He continues to make music with wonderful people of all ages as Music Director at The Church of the Covenant, in University Circle.