Author Details

Dr. Mark Huggins is the Music Program Chair for Commercial Music, Music Theory, and Worship Arts at Grand Canyon University (GCU), where he functions as chair over the Commercial Music degree, the Bachelor of Arts in Worship Arts degrees music courses, and all College of Arts and Media music theory related courses. At GCU, Dr. Huggins is a member of the One Foundation advisory committee, the Bachelors of Worship Arts Leadership committee, and the General Education committee. Before his appointment at GCU, Dr. Huggins taught music theory, music history, and world music courses at Glendale Community College and Estrella Mountain Community College in the greater Phoenix area. Before switching vocations to higher education, Dr. Huggins worked as a worship leader and pastor for a dozen years, and as a campus producer and technical director for an additional four years.

Dr. Huggins research has been focused on popular music education and developing an engaging and relevant curriculum for twenty-first-century music students. In his dissertation titled “The Pedagogical Reasoning and Action of Popular Music Theory Professors in Higher Popular Music Education Programs,” Dr. Huggins reported on contemporary methods for popular music pedagogy and made recommendations for curricular development in popular and commercial music programs.
The amalgamation of experience with popular music and training in western European classical music styles has allowed Dr. Huggins to bridge classical and contemporary music styles to develop an emergent curriculum for modern students that is adaptive to a variety of educational goals.

Dr. Huggins remains active in researching current pedagogical trends in popular music pedagogy, and has presented his research both within the continental United States at the Association for Popular Music Education conferences, and internationally at the International Society for Music Education Popular Music Symposium in Australia.