Kteily-O'Sullivan, Laila
Assistant Professor of Music Theory
BM, MM, PhD, University of North Texas
Email: Laila.Kteily-O'Sullivan@unt.edu
Laila Kteily-O’Sullivan earned three degrees (B.M., M.M. and Ph.D.) from the College of Music, University of North Texas. She was appointed Assistant Professor of Music Theory upon returning to UNT in 2006. Her specialization is Pedagogy of Music Theory, with particular interests in Aural Skills acquisition and the Undergraduate Music Theory core. Dr. Kteily-O’Sullivan recently published Passage to Music Literacy: Syllabus for Aural Skills, with colleague Dr. Gene Cho (Kendall Hunt, 2009) and serves as textbook reviewer for publishers such as Pearson/ Prentice Hall, Routledge, W.W. Norton and Oxford University Press.
Currently, Dr. Kteily-O’Sullivan teaches a variety of courses, including the accelerated Music Theory and Aural Skills 3- semester course sequence for freshmen and sophomores who test into this “honors” option, as well as graduate level Problems in Music Theory Pedagogy. She supervises graduate Music Theory TA/TF’s as they teach in courses such as Fundamentals and Aural Skills I and II, and enjoys observing and assisting them in their development as pedagogues.
Dedicating time and effort to academics outside the College of Music is also important to Dr. Kteily-O’Sullivan. To this end, she was recently named as a Faculty Fellow in the Transformative Instruction Initiative offered by the Center for Learning Enhancement, Assessment, and Redesign. She hopes to extend the ideas in this initial course re-design to the large sections of freshman music theory, potentially improving the student learning outcomes there.
Working actively with the transcription and analysis of improvised jazz is a favorite pursuit for Dr. Kteily-O’Sullivan; she also writes analytical and historical research in vocal jazz, with published articles appearing in IAJE Jazz Research Proceedings and in Jazz Educators Journal. She is fascinated by every aspect of music learning and musicianship, especially matters of classroom interaction and the music student’s perception of relevance.