Charles D. Morrison
Charles D. Morrison is professor of music theory in the Faculty of Music at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. Dr. Morrison began teaching in the Faculty in 1987 and in 1999 became Dean of the Faculty, a position he held for two terms, finishing in June of 2010. He has presented papers and published articles on the music of Ligeti, Schoenberg, and Bartók, and worked with the internationally renowned Penderecki String Quartet on a series of lecture recitals on the complete cycle of Bartók string quartets, also completing the liner notes for the PSQ’s recording of the Bartók cycle. He has also published on topics in aesthetics, music perception, and music education. Morrison’s disciplinary research involves qualitative and temporal dimensions of music perception, aesthetics of the listening experience, improvisational theory and perception, the solo improvisations of Keith Jarrett, and the construction and perception of the musical present. His work in teaching and learning involves many issues central to post-secondary education, including the advocacy for broad-based liberal education, high-impact practices in and across the disciplines, and the processes of curricular mapping and designing programmatic learning objectives. His recent research includes the development of a ‘student-as-scholar’ model, using the template of an academic/professional scholar as defined by Ernst Boyer in his Scholarship Reconsidered. His current work deals with distinctions between information and knowledge, transformational processes linking the two, cyclic modes of learning, and ultimately the construction of a ‘spiral-theory’ of learning.