Linda C. Ferguson, Department Chair and Professor of Music, holds Bachelor of Music and Master of Music degrees in Music Theory and the Doctor of Musical Arts Degree in Music History and Literature from University of Missouri-Kansas City. She teaches courses and seminars in music history and music in general education. She also serves as an Assistant Dean in the College of Arts and Sciences. From 1987-1991 she served as the Director of Freshman Seminars at VU. From 1991-1995 she served as Valparaiso University's Lumina Center Director, with special responsibility for grant seeking and administering of funded projects. She serves as chair of Region Five (Indiana, Ohio, and Michigan) in the accreditation organization, National Association of Schools of Music. Before coming to VU she taught for eight years in the Program of Liberal Studies (the "Great Books Program") at University of Notre Dame. She has studied electronic music at Dartmouth College and the oral literature of Native Americans at the D'Arcy McNickle Center of the Newberry Library, both on NEH grants.

Dr. Ferguson's publications include scholarly articles and essays in Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, American Music Teacher, The Cimarron Review, The Yearbook for Interdisciplinary Studies, The Department Chair, and The College Music Society Newsletter. She is author of two articles in the recent American National Biography set from Oxford University Press. In January 2002 she presented her inaugural lecture (on the occasion of promotion to full professor) at Valparaiso University, entitled "Music in the Academy: Process, Product, & the Cultivation of Humanity."

She has presented papers at the national meetings of American Society for Aesthetics, the Society for Values in Higher Education, and the National Association of Schools of Music, the National Academic Chair's Conference, Association of General and Liberal Studies, and at regional meetings of College Music Society and the American Musicological Society. Dr. Ferguson's music criticism has appeared in The South Bend Tribune, The Notre Dame Observer, and The Cresset. She is especially interested in the history of music in America, the impact of modern technology on musical composition, the history of musical aesthetics, and the relationships between vernacular and classical musics. Beyond her work at VU, she enjoys gardening, animals, participation in a long-standing faculty study group, and travels with her husband, Ralph Klapis, of VU's voice faculty.

Office: VUCA 1107
Tel: (219) 464-5454
E-mail: Linda.Ferguson@valpo.edu

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