Music-in-Education
Dr. Helen Liu is a music educator, researcher, and professional musician, who has made summative contributions to the field of music-in-education through her expertise and interests in assessment, rubric development, digital portfolio technology, tools for online learning, and project management.
Since 2003, Dr. Liu has participated on research teams organized by the Center for Music-In-Education and the Music-In-Education National Consortium. An expert in devising rubrics for student learning and program development; she has consulted for projects nationwide, including San Francisco Symphony’s Keeping Score, Chicago Arts Partnerships in Education’s Partnerships in Arts Integrated Research, New Ventures in Music Literacy, and for Consortium partners Music Center of Los Angeles, Ramsey International Fine Arts Center, and the Metropolitan Opera Guild.
In 2007, Dr. Liu began working with the MIENC Digital Portfolio taskforce, and has since helped improve those digital portfolio initiatives through her translations of the Consortium’s Rubrics Cube and Artist-Teacher-Scholar frameworks. Her skills with online technology have greatly influenced user interface design for the digital portfolio system and have helped to bring clarity to the sophisticated research those portfolios are based on. She has run portfolio usability training sessions for the Consortium at each of its national conferences (2007-2009) and works as part of the team which designs and maintains the Consortium’s online content, including its websites, Web Sourcebook for Music Learning Leadership Teams, digital portfolio databases, and other project management systems.
Most recently, Dr. Liu’s work (as violin teacher and curriculum developer) for the Atrium School’s Music PLUS Music Integration Program has helped that program become one of the flagship programs of its kind within the Consortium.
A graduate of New England Conservatory’s Music-In-Education Concentration, Dr. Liu earned degrees in violin performance from Stony Brook University (D.M.A.), NEC (M.M. and G.D.), and University of Maryland (B.M.). In addition to performing with violist Leewen Chang in the Luna Duo, Dr. Liu freelances with numerous orchestral, chamber, and baroque ensembles, including the Honolulu Symphony, the Orchestra of Indian Hill, the Harvard Baroque Chamber Ensemble, and the International Baroque Institute at Longy. She is a founding player with The WAITIKI 7, a critically- and popularly-acclaimed modern exotica ensemble, with whom she has recorded the albums Adventures in Paradise and New Sounds of Exotica.
