Alice Hammel is a widely known music educator, author, and clinician whose experience in music is extraordinarily diverse. She teaches for James Madison and Virginia Commonwealth Universities in the areas of music education and music theory respectively, and has many years of experience teaching both instrumental and choral music in public and private schools. She has maintained a large, independent flute studio for over 20 years. Most recently, Dr. Hammel is also the Autism Spectrum Disorder Music Intervention Specialist for ASSET (Autism Spectrum Support, Education and Training), a division of Virginia Youth and Family Services.
Dr. Hammel has put these varied experiences to great use while compiling a large body of scholarly work. Dr. Hammel is a co-author for two texts: Teaching Music to Students with Special Needs: A Label-free Approach, and Teaching Music to Students with Autism, available through Oxford University Press. A new resource, Winding It Back: Teaching to Individual Differences in Music Classroom and Ensemble Settings, will be released in 2015. Dr. Hammel has contributed chapters to several other Oxford University Press resources including Composing our Future (edited by Kaschub and Smith). Dr. Hammel is a contributing author to a variety of resources available through the National Association for Music Education (NAfME) and has published widely in music, arts, special, and general education journals.
Dr. Hammel has been affiliated with the John F. Kennedy Center for the Arts for several years and has presented multiple workshops for arts educators and arts administrators through this association. She has been a Thought Leader for the Kennedy Center National Forum: Examining the Intersection of Arts Education and Special Education since 2012, and serves on the planning committee for their annual national conference. Dr. Hammel serves in many concurrent state and national professional leadership positions, including as the chair of the Students with Special Needs section of the Virginia Music Educators Association, and is a multiple award recipient honoring her commitment to music education and music teacher education.
