Music Conservatory of Westchester

Our Mission: To provide the extraordinary benefits of music to all in our community.<br>Our Values: We believe in the inherent power of music to provide personal enrichment, creative expression, lifelong learning, cultural appreciation, and joy for everyone.<br>Excellence - We strive to provide leadership and innovation in music education, encompassing high standards, best teaching practices and respect for individual differences. We seek to be a place where students of all ages and abilities grow through music and have the opportunity to develop their skills and talents to their greatest potential.<br>Access - Guided by our commitment to inclusiveness, we believe that financial limitations or differing ability should never be a barrier to learning. We take our programs into the community as necessary to ensure this.<br>Community - We bring people together through musical collaboration, bridging differences, forging connections, and celebrating musical and cultural diversity.<br>

Our vision for the future will support the necessity to modernize the Conservatory for the 21st cent

Goal One: Expand our concept of music education to incorporate a wider range of genres and styles, and to meet the learning needs and interests of a broader range of students.

Goal Two: Integrate technology across our program offerings to align with current trends in music education and performance, and to help today’s students prepare for the future.

Goal Three: Re-imagine our location and facilities to meet 21st century programmatic and lifestyle priorities.

In 2021 we initiated a faculty development and mentoring initiative to support emerging teacher-leaders and nurture younger faculty members. The goal of this initiative is to create a core group of teacher-leaders, further strengthen the quality of teaching at our school, and promote faculty and student retention. The pilot project has designated our most experienced Suzuki violin teacher as mentor to two other Suzuki teachers, and created a leadership position for her within the Suzuki program. She is working with our Associate Dean for Programs, who is overseeing this initiative.

The biggest impacts on the Conservatory in the past year have resulted from the Covid-19 pandemic. The financial impact, mainly due to a 25% loss in enrollment, has been significant. We were fortunate to receive a second, fully forgiveable PPP loan as a short-term mitigation, but we have also put in place a number of long-term strategies. (1) We have reconfigured our marketing efforts to focus on building enrollment for new and existing programs, and have just initiated a digital marketing campaign for the first time. (2) Our program leadership has focused on building and strengthening relationships with public and private school music programs to attract new students to enroll with us, and to forge new programmatic partnership opportunities. (3) We have forged ahead with a capital project to create five new teaching studios in our building that will house technology-based programs, including Westchester's very first precollege training program in Recording Engineering and Music Production. (4) We have focused on forging new relationships with foundations and individual donors to ensure our fundraising remains strong for the future. (5) We have explored new ways to build and diversify our Board to ensure the membership reflects our community as well as meeting our internal needs. New approaches include gaining acceptance to an external nonprofit board development organization, increased outreach to local corporations and businesses to identify new members, and creating a Young Board Member category with a modified give/get requirement to enable younger parents of our students to become Board members.