Dr. Kateri (Kate) Miller
Assistant Professor, Music Education
Office: Old Main 126
Email: kateri.miller@minotstateu.edu
Phone: 701-858-3837
B.M. Heidelberg University, Ohio
M.M. Bowling Green State University, Ohio
Ph.D. University of Kentucky, Kentucky
Kateri Miller is the Music Education Professor at Minot State University specializing in elementary music methods. Dr. Miller has been teaching children and adults for over 22 years. Her teaching experience includes elementary general music in both private and public schools, including 8 years in the Clark County School District in Las Vegas, Nevada. She is certified in Orff-Schulwerk, has three levels of training in Kodály and training in Dalcroze Eurhythmics. In addition, she has two graduate certificates from the University of Kentucky: Eurhythmics and Research Methods in Education.
At Minot State, Dr. Miller teaches Elementary Music Methods, Secondary Choral Methods, Music in the Elementary Classroom, Educational Psychology, Ukulele for beginning and advanced players, and supervises student teachers. Locally, she briefly taught elementary general music at Bishop Ryan Catholic School part-time. She was the administrative director for the Western Plains Children’s Choirs and conducted the youngest group of third through fifth graders for three years. Currently, she teaches children from the community demonstrating and highlighting the Orff approach to teaching children in a group called Music for Children, which involves teaching third through fifth graders. Additionally, she is manager for Region 8-Class B schools, where she organizes and is in charge of running the music festivals.
Dr. Miller is an active presenter and presents original material for teacher professional development at various Orff Chapter workshops in the United States, and state Music Educator conferences including: Kentucky, Minnesota, South Dakota, and North Dakota. She has also presented original material at the national level for the American Orff-Schulwerk Association Professional Development Conference. In the past, she developed and taught a course for teachers in Las Vegas for professional development credit on using the Orff Schulwerk Volumes for Children. For over six years, she has had the privilege of training teachers in many school districts across the country to use the GAMEPLAN curriculum by Randy DeLelles and Jeff Kriske.
Locally in Minot, Dr. Miller plans and facilitates professional development for area music teachers, including being the course director for Orff Levels held at Minot State. A big fan of the ukulele, she holds 5-6 Ukulele Jams a year for the university and community members. The Ukulele Jam welcomes players of all levels to come together to make music! Dr. Miller’s bachelor degree is in music performance on the euphonium. She loves playing her horn and plays with the Minot City Band in the summers, the Minot Symphony when needed, and prepared for and presented a faculty recital (April 2023).
Active in the American Orff-Schulwerk Association (AOSA), she is the past president of Nevada’s Desert-Valley Chapter of AOSA, registration chair for the 2015 AOSA Professional Development Conference and is a past member of the board of trustees. She currently sits on AOSA’s subcommittee for Professional Development/Research. In addition, she is a board member of the Alliance for Active Music Making. In North Dakota, she serves as the Collegiate Representative for North Dakota Music Educator Association.
Dr. Miller’s research interest includes song teaching approaches and approaches to elementary music teaching, specifically Orff, Kodály and Dalcroze. She has presented her research at NAfME, Mid-South Music Education Research Symposium, Mountain Lake Colloquium, and OAKE. She has published articles in the online resource Reverberations by AOSA, The North Dakota Music Educator, book reviews in The Orff Echo. She was also involved with creating the digital component to the visuals for GAMEPLAN as well as collecting and organizing a Webliography for AOSA on research related to the Orff-Schulwerk.
When she is not teaching or researching elementary general music, Dr. Miller enjoys spending time with her husband Bill, facetiming her granddaughter and other family members in Ohio, joining church activities, and reading.
