Bridget Sweet is Associate Professor of Music Education at University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign, Illinois. After completing her Bachelors Degree in Music Education at Western Michigan University, Dr. Sweet enjoyed a successful tenure as a middle school choir teacher for nearly ten years. Her interests in adolescent music education intensified during her Masters and Doctoral programs in Music Education at Michigan State University, which contributed to her research focused on characteristics of effective and exemplary music teachers. Prior to her work at the University of Illinois, Dr. Sweet was Assistant Professor of Music at Bucknell University in Lewisburg, PA, where she taught music education courses and coordinated the music student teaching program. At the University of Illinois, Dr. Sweet teaches music education pedagogy, including choral methods and literature, middle-level general music methods, graduate courses in music education, as well as a course focused on the development of healthy practices for all musicians.
Dr. Sweet has worked extensively with adolescent singers as a teacher, clinician, and adjudicator. She wrote the booksGrowing Musicians: Teaching Music in Middle School and Beyond (2016, Oxford University Press) and Thinking Outside the Voice Box: Adolescent Voice Change in Music Education (2019, Oxford University Press). Dr. Sweet’sresearch interests include middle level choral music education, female and male adolescent voice change, empowering music educators, health and wellness, and intersections of diversity and the music classroom. Her research has appeared in publications of Bulletin of the Council for Research in Music Education, Choral Journal, International Journal of Music Education: Research, Journal of Research in Music Education and Update: Applications of Research in Music Education. She was invited to author the chapter “Qualitative Choral Music Research” in The Oxford Handbook of Qualitative Research in American Music Education (2014). Dr. Sweet is an Advisory Board member of Bulletin of the Council of Research in Music Education and member of the Editorial Committee of the International Journal of Research in Choral Music, Journal of Research in Music Education, and Qualitative Research in Music Education.
