In 2011, as a graduate student, Adena Schachner, PhD, received a $10,000 APF Elizabeth Munsterberg Koppitz Child Psychology Fellowship to study the cognitive effects of exposing preschool children to synchronized movement to music, such as through musical play. She also studied the cognitive effects of preschool music education. She found that children who were given music classes performed no better on any assessment than children who had visual arts classes or no classes. Her findings, published in PLOS ONE in 2013, were covered extensively in the media and directly affected the tactics used by music educators to promote arts education in schools. Days after the study was covered extensively by the media, the National Association of Music Education released a statement that it would be changing its advocacy strategy. Now, instead of stating that music should be taught because it helps non-musical skills, the organization argues that music should be taught because of its intrinsic value and benefits to quality of life.
The Koppitz support also enabled Schachner to focus on her research, dissertation writing and postdoc applications during her final year of graduate school, instead of spending the year working as a teaching assistant to pay for her research.
She was also able to apply for her first NIH grant. She's now working as a postdoctoral researcher at Boston University, with three years of research funding from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. "Without the Koppitz Fellowship's funding, preparing a complex NIH grant application while finishing my dissertation would have been out of the question," she says. "The Koppitz Fellowship played a crucial role in helping me avoid this difficult situation and remain an active and excited member of the psychological science community."
