Bennett Reimer - Professional Contributions

Professional Contributions

As a participant in the professional life of his field, Reimer has served on the Editorial Boards of all the major journals; was National Chairman of the Music Educators National Conference (MENC) Committee on Aesthetic Education; was MENC liaison for Arts Education Initiatives: represented MENC as a member of The Alliance for Curriculum Reform and the Aesthetic Education Curriculum Program sponsored by the U.S. Office of Education; was a member of the six-person task force that wrote the National Standards for Music Education; and was one of six Commission Authors of position papers for the MENC Vision 2020 Project(The Housewright Symposium / Vision 2020). He was Director of a three-year research project on the general music curriculum sponsored by the U.S. Office of Education; was a research exchange scholar studying music education practices from Kindergarten through Conservatory in China for a 3-month period in 1986, sponsored by the Chinese government and Harvard Project Zero; was for six years Co-Director and Principal Consultant for the teacher education project “Education for Aesthetic Awareness: The Cleveland Area Project for the Arts in the Schools;” and for five years was a member of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund Awards Committee for Exemplary School Arts Programs. Reimer presents many keynote addresses and lectures each year throughout the United States and the world, including appearances in England, Japan, Saudi Arabia, New Zealand, The Netherlands, Canada, Hong Kong, Ireland, South Africa, China, and Australia. He was awarded an Honorary Doctorate from DePaul University, Chicago, in 1997. Also in 1997 he was designated the third “Legend of Teaching” in the history of the Northwestern University School of Music. A special double issue of The Journal of Aesthetic Education, "Musings: Essays in Honor of Bennett Reimer," was published in Winter, 2000. In 2002, Reimer was inducted into the Music Educators Hall of Fame. In 2008 he was the recipient of the MENC Senior Researcher Award.