Alpha Woodward

Alpha Woodward

Alpha Woodward, a music therapist accredited through the Canadian Association of Music Therapy, has been named director of music therapy at Wartburg College. In this role she will teach undergraduate courses and lead the college’s first graduate-level program, a master’s in music therapy.

“I was attracted to Wartburg because I was impressed by the way the college took its mission statement to heart,” Woodward said. “The intention of the college, as seen in the mission statement, pervades the ethos of the institution. “

She will spend this year teaching undergraduate coursework, finalizing the curriculum for the master’s degree and recruiting students to the program.

“The master’s degree will look closely at service in the community and how we work with cultural diversity so that students are sensitive to, and comfortable working with, current issues in the world today,” she said. “Advanced clinical applications will strengthen and deepen the skills of experienced music therapists who are already working in the field.”

Woodward started her career as a private contract music therapist at a long-term care facility in Vancouver, British Columbia, and later became the organization’s first full-time music therapist. Beginning in 2004, she spent about four years at the Pavarotti Music Centre in Bosnia and Herzegovina, where she worked with refugees and the humanitarians who cared for them. She also provided clinical supervision and directional leadership for the center’s clinical outreach programs in special-needs schools, psychiatric units and orphanages in and around Mostar and Sarajevo.

She has taught at Concordia University in Montreal; served as course director for the master’s in music therapy program at the Irish World Academy of Music and Dance in Limerick, Ireland; and was the interim director of music therapy at Marywood University in Scranton, Penn.

“My life has made so much more sense and has become so much richer because of my vocation in music therapy. It has transformed my life in so many ways,” Woodward said. “It is a privilege to use music in a way that makes a difference in other people’s lives, and at the end of the day you know the work mattered to someone.”

Woodward earned a master’s in music therapy from Open University in British Columbia and her Ph.D. from Antioch University in Ohio.