Trevecca Nazarene University’s Board of Trustees underlined its commitment to musicians and the music industry when they voted unanimously November 6 to form the School of Music and Worship Arts.

Effective January 1, 2016, the action moves all of Trevecca’s music programs under one umbrella, giving students a single point of entry and a large selection of majors and minors from which to choose.

University President Dan Boone describes the strategic move as Trevecca’s “next great step forward.”

“Nashville is globally recognized as Music City, USA, and our programs reflect many ways that a student can prepare for a career in music,” Boone said. “By creating the Trevecca School of Music and Worship Arts, we are able to provide a single entity that can explain the different programs and how they interact.”

The new school will be comprised of Trevecca’s existing Department of Music, the Center for Worship Arts, and the National Praise and Worship Institute. Each program will retain its unique approach, but the realignment will allow for greater collaboration.

“The unification of our programs brings together a great group of music educators and musicians who can more easily collaborate with each other across our various majors and program concentrations,” said Steve Pusey, university provost. “This will allow the individual units to maintain their distinctiveness while drawing upon the unique abilities and strengths that the faculty as a whole brings to the school.”

David Diehl, named the first dean of the School of Music and Worship Arts, says the new school will provide Trevecca’s music programs with greater reach and impact.

“By combining our resources we can have a larger footprint in our community — educational, musical, local — which should help raise the awareness of our programs and impact our ability to recruit and become a leading voice regarding music and worship arts in our community, city, and [the] church,” said Diehl, chair of Trevecca’s Music Department for 10 years.

Diehl says the realignment will create more opportunities for students in each program to interact. The new structure will also expose students to wider range of ideas and teaching styles, while also giving rise to more efficiency in recruitment.

The School of Music and Worship Arts will become Trevecca’s fifth school, joining the School of Arts and Sciences, Skinner School of Business and Technology, School of Education, and the Millard Reed School of Theology and Christian Ministry. Trevecca's music business program will remain housed in the business school, while the music education programs will remain in the School of Education.

--Trevecca Nazarene University