This fall the department welcomed two new members to its program: Alicia M. Doyle (left), professor and department chair; and Julie Herndon, assistant professor of music technology and composition.

Alicia M. Doyle

Alicia M. Doyle began serving as chair of the Cal Poly Music Department in September 2022. Doyle brings with her a wealth of experience and expertise in promoting student success and driving curricular change.

Doyle has an extensive background in academia, having held positions as professor of music at the University of Texas, El Paso, and in the College of the Arts at California State University, Long Beach (CSULB). During her 19 years at CSULB, she served in many roles, including director of graduate studies, B.A. advisor and both associate and interim director of the Bob Cole Conservatory of Music. Doyle has more than three decades of experience teaching courses in music history and music appreciation. An active scholar, she specializes in medieval liturgical music, music history pedagogy and 20th-century Latin American popular and art music. Her work in those areas has been published widely. She earned her bachelor’s degree in horn performance at the University of Southern California and master’s degree and doctorate in musicology from the University of California, Santa Barbara. She has served in several administrative roles, including the National Board of Directors for the College Music Society (CMS), president of the Pacific Southwest Chapter of CMS and president of the Pacific Southwest Chapter of the American Musicological Society.

 

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Julie Herndon

Julie Herndon, assistant professor, is the department’s new director of the music technology program and will also teach courses in composition. She previously taught composition and electronic music production techniques at San Francisco Conservatory of Music and the Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics at Stanford University. She holds a Doctor of Musical Arts degree from Stanford, a Master of Arts degree in music composition from Mills College and a Bachelor of Arts degree from St. Mary’s College of Maryland.

A composer, performer and sound artist, she explores the body’s relationship to sound. Her compositions and installations have been presented at the MATA Festival and National Sawdust in New York, Artistry Space in Singapore, Museo de Arte Contemporaneo de Oaxaca in Mexico, Music Biennale Zagreb, Sogar Theater in Zurich and by Forest Collective in Australia. Recent collaborations include the Decoder Ensemble, JACK Quartet, Ensemble Dal Niente and Kukuruz Quartet.

Herndon is the recipient of the Elisabeth Crothers Award for Music Composition, American Composers Forum Bay Area Residency and Georges Lurcy Fellowship. As an artist in residence, she has collaborated with institutions such as the Cité Internationale des Arts, Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Center for Music and Audio Technologies at Berkeley and Djerassi Artist Residency Program. She is currently composer in residence with the Peninsula Women’s Chorus and a curator at the San Francisco Center for New Music. Her writing, “Embodied Composition: Composing the Body with Sound,” can be found in the journal Leonardo with MIT Press.