When you enroll at Susquehanna, you’ll be paired with an advisor and application tool to guide you in your course planning and scheduling. The following is an excerpt from the complete course catalog. Enrolled students follow the requirements of the course catalog for the academic year in which they declare each major and/or minor, consult with their advisor(s) and the Academic Planning Tool.

Interdisciplinary Minor in Church Music

The Minor in Church Music aims to capacitate students with a keen interest in using their musical talents in church ministry, either as clergy or as music directors. Through this minor, students will garner basic musical skills as well as knowledge of liturgical musical practices. The culmination of the program is a service-based project, where students apply their church music skills in a supervised internship either as an organist or director, assistant director for a church musical group (a church choir, hand-bell ensemble, or praise team) or in a liturgical leadership position (deacon of worship, worship committee member).

Students will choose and organize a service-based experience as an independent study at the end of the program. As an alternative, students may choose to use that Independent Study to prepare and take the Choir-Master Certificate exam or the Service Playing Certificate exam offered by the American Guild of Organists.

Double-counting restriction

For students who are music majors, the maximum number of double-counting credits is up to 6SH from the required courses and up to 4 SH from the elective selections. For students who are Religious Studies majors, the maximum number of double-counting credits is up to 4SH from the required courses and up to 4 SH from the elective selections.

12    Required Courses:

4  RELI-/MUSC-353 The Practice of Church Music

4  RELI/MUSC-215 Music in Christian Rituals

2  MUSC -161 Theory I

2  MUSC-082 University Choir
OR MUSC-083 University Chorale

NOTE: each course is 1SH, taken for a total of 2 SH

12 Additional hours

At least 4SH must be either Organ or Voice lessons: however, no more than 6SH of lessons may count.

1   MUSC-003 Organ Lesson

2   MUSC-004 Organ Lesson

1   MUSC-009 Voice Lesson

1   MUSC-010 Voice Lesson

2   MUSC-163 Ear Training 1

2   MUSC-369 Beginning Conducting

4   RELI-103 The New Testament

4   RELI-201 The Hebrew Bible

4   RELI-313 Church History:1500 to Present

Applied Music Lessons

Lessons carry one or two semester hours of credit. Students earn credit of one semester hour for a weekly half-hour lesson. Bachelor of Arts majors take a one-semester-hour lesson on their major instrument. Music education majors and performance majors take a weekly one-hour lesson on their major instrument and receive two semester hours of credit.

A fee is charged per semester for individual lessons that are not stated specifically as curricular requirements (nonmajors or extra lessons for majors). Such lessons are contingent upon faculty availability within the normal teaching load.