Ohio Music Education Association

The Ohio Music Education Association is one of the largest state music organizations in the country, and is run as a state division of MENC: The National Association for Music Education.

The OMEA structure is as follows: The presiding group is the OMEA Board of Trustees, which includes the President, President-Elect, the immediate Past-President, the Treasurer, the Secretary, and the TRIAD editor. The Board of Trustees then oversees three additional groups: the Executive Director, the State Board, and Contracted Services. The largest of these three groups is the State Board, which includes District Officers from 17 districts across the state of Ohio, Region Officers from 5 regions, several committee chairs for special topics committees, and liaisons who represent the needs of different demographics of music educators including retired members and student members.

The TRIAD is the journal that the OMEA publishes several times throughout the academic year. As budgets have been tight over the past few years, many state music organizations such as the OMEA have started to focus more on advocacy needs for the profession, as music programs have continued to be cut across the country, despite the insistence that music is a central part of a student’s well-rounded education. The October/November 2010 issue of the TRIAD journal focused especially on advocacy, and as a special service to our profession, posted many of the articles in .pdf version that are still available on the OMEAwebsite.

Another great thing that the OMEA is doing is teaming up with the Ohio Art Education Association and the Ohio Educational Theater Association to provide weekly updates about the arts to educators in the state of Ohio. While the national organizations have often teamed up, such as during the creation of the national standards for arts education, this spirit of arts collaboration has not necessarily been extended in most states. While many arts programs compete for the same students (artistically-minded students are often the ones who want to participate in all three: music, art, and theater) it is important that the three are able to be unified in a common approach to educating the arts.