The College of Arts and Letters welcomes Dr. Julie Combs to Missouri State University! Dr. Combs has been named Department Head of Music and begins her role on July 1, 2010.
“We are very much looking forward to Dr. Combs joining us at Missouri State,” Dr. Carey Adams, Dean of the College of Arts and Letters, says. “With her prior administrative experience and leadership in the National Association of Schools of Music, she will bring both a veteran’s hand and a newcomer’s fresh perspective to leading our outstanding music programs.”
Dr. Combs previously served as Department Head of Music at the University of Wyoming, where she was a professor from 1978 to 2005 and head from 1999 to 2005, and at Oklahoma State University from 2005 to present. Combs received her Bachelor of Music in Woodwinds (Oboe Performance) and Master of Music (Oboe Performance) with Performer’s Certificates from the University of Memphis. She studied and performed on the modern and baroque oboes at the University of North Texas, where she received her Doctor of Musical Arts degree.
Combs performs regularly as a soloist, chamber musician, and orchestral oboist and also plays the English horn. She served as principal oboe for the US Army Chamber Orchestra and was the fourth woman accepted as a member of the United States Army Band “Pershing’s Own” in Washington, D.C. She has presented at meetings of the College Music Society, Society for American Music, and the National Association of Schools of Music (NASM), which she has also served as a member of the Ethics Committee and Commission on Accreditation.
“I am thrilled and excited to become a part of the Missouri State University Music Department and look forward to working with Dean Carey Adams, the COAL department heads, music faculty, staff, and especially the students,” Dr. Combs says. “Coming to Springfield returns me to my home state and to the campus where, as a junior high student, I began deciding on a life in music. It’s my goal to expand the music department’s traditions of excellence for music majors, non-majors, and for audiences within and beyond our state. I can’t wait to get ‘maroonified!'”