Davenport brings music to UW Tacoma

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“The concert was quite successful, and everyone told me how much they loved it. It got me thinking that maybe we should pursue music here at UWT.”

Just over a year later, Davenport has helped the campus acquire a piano—free of charge—and just started teaching one of UW Tacoma’s first music classes. This quarter, Davenport is teaching “Concert Music in a Global Society” to a small cohort of freshmen. And she’s helping Smith organize a series of musical performances for the campus community in April.

“Music can help UW Tacoma contribute culturally to our society, and I’m happy to help make that happen,” she said.

When Davenport decided to look into getting a piano for the UW Tacoma campus, she learned that universities are often given free rent on musical instruments in exchange for publicity and the chance to sell the used instruments on campus after a one-year rental period. Clinton’s Music House, located just a few blocks away on Tacoma Avenue, offered to help her set up a deal with Yamaha. When the deal fell through—Yamaha was reluctant to start a partnership on a small college campus with no music program—Clinton’s offered a year of free rental on an upright piano. The instrument was delivered last month.

Around the same time, the first freshman class at UW Tacoma grew so big that administrators decided to create a fourth cohort of students—meaning that they’d need to find additional instructors and develop class curriculum in a very short time period. Beth Kalikoff, associate vice chancellor for Academic Affairs, asked Davenport to consider lending her musical talents to a new freshman class. UW Tacoma has never offered a music appreciation class, and only a few music history classes—IAS' "History of Rock and Roll" and "History of Jazz."

“A four-year university has a responsibility to introduce its students to the arts – performing arts, visual arts and literary arts,” Kalikoff said. “We already have a small but superb studio arts curriculum and compelling literature courses here. With this class, we have the beginnings of an engaging, interdisciplinary music program. It’s something students and their parents have been asking for.”

Davenport has a Master of Music from Northwestern University and has performed around the world and released a number of classical music CDs.

“Concert Music in a Global Society” is generally a music appreciation class, although students will hear a variety of musical performers, including Davenport. Because it is a smaller group of students—this is a class of 25, while the other three freshman cohorts have around 50 students each—the class is not team-taught. Davenport has arranged for guest lecturers from UW Tacoma and beyond to broaden the horizons of the class, and is lining up guest performers from Tacoma Opera, UW Seattle and more.

The UW Tacoma community will be invited to hear the performers, she said.

In addition to the class performances, Davenport and Smith are working together to bring more music to campus. They hope to plan a month-long series of early-afternoon performances in Carwein Auditorium. They may even seek out hidden musical talent right here on the UW Tacoma campus, Davenport says. She's also working with others on campus to establish a UW Tacoma choir, possibly directed by a graduate student from Seattle, which would be open to students, staff and faculty.

“By establishing music at UW Tacoma, we can bring people to campus,” she said. “It’s a recruiting tool, but it’s also a way to contribute culturally to our society. I think it’s important for a university to be one of the centers of culture in the community.”