Amy N. Melton

Amy Melton is a Ph.D. student in Music and Human learning at the University of Texas at Austin, where she teaches fundamentals of classroom instruments and assists with courses in children’s musical development.  Originally from the Atlanta area, Amy grew up in a musical home with both parents as music educators. She received her B.M. in Music Education from Columbus State University, graduating summa cum laude and with honors.

After graduating, Amy taught elementary general music at Benefield Elementary from 2017-2021. There she co-conducted the Benefield Singers, a 120-student choir that performed concerts and musicals for school audiences and traveled within the community. At Benefield Elementary, Amy taught students from more than 80 countries. She draws from this experience as a scholar and studies how student immigrants experience participating in music classes, as well as how teachers approach instructing student immigrants. She specializes in qualitative methodologies, including case study, phenomenology, grounded theory, narrative, and ethnography.

Amy was chosen by the University System of Georgia as Columbus State’s only Scholar of the Year in 2016. In 2016, she was also fully funded as a Spencer Scholar to study musicology for two terms at Regents Park College, Oxford University. Additionally, she was chosen by the Schwob School of Music as a Presser Scholar, in acknowledgement of her excellence in education, music performance, research, and leadership in the school of music. Amy is a certified First Steps in Music instructor.

Before coming to the University, Amy gigged actively as a horn player in the Columbus, Atlanta, and Montgomery areas and was a member of the Blue River Brass Quintet. In Austin she enjoys performing informal music by singing and playing keys in highly improvisatory pop settings and writing her own songs.