Dr. Benjamin C. Helton is Assistant Professor of Music Education at ÐÇ¿Õ´«Ã½ and director of the Spartan Marching Band. His other duties at ÐÇ¿Õ´«Ã½ include teaching graduate and undergraduate courses in music education that include Foundations of Music Education, Music Cognition and Learning, Sociology of Music Education, and Arts Education Advocacy and Policy.
Helton holds a Bachelors of Music Education from the University of Illinois. He has taught all grades of instrumental music in both rural and urban settings. After teaching public school for six years in both downstate Illinois and the Chicagoland area, he pursued a Master of Music from Northern Illinois University where he worked extensively with the Huskie Marching band and directed the Huskie Pep Band. He then returned to the University of Illinois to earn a PhD in Music Education, where he was a graduate assistant whose duties included supervising over 40 student teachers, working with a multitude of undergraduate courses, and participating in various research groups specializing in evaluation and the cognitive sciences in teaching and learning in the College of Education
Dr. Helton’s primary research interests include arts education policy, music assessment, and music cognition. His research has been published in the Journal of Music Teacher Education, International Journal of Music Education, Contributions to Music Education, Arts Education Policy Review, The Instrumentalist, and the Teaching Music Through Performance in Band book series. Dr. Helton has presented clinics for the Midwest Band & Orchestra Clinic, International Symposium on Assessment in Music Education, Ohio Music Educators Association, Illinois Music Educators Conference, and the NAfME Music Research and Teacher Education National Conference. Dr. Helton is a staunch supporter of public education and arts education whose writings have been published in local and national media.