Music therapy camp gets boost from Baker Fund award
OHIO students (L-R) Carly Reese, Hannah Doerbaum, Nicole McCullough and Nicole Price play music at the 2016 Camp R.O.C.K. Photo by Daniel King.
Two Ohio University professors will be expanding their research on using music therapy to boost the social skills of children with high-functioning autism after receiving support from the John C. Baker Fund.
Laura Brown, assistant professor of music therapy, and Joann Benigno, associate professor of communication sciences and disorders, were awarded $10,905 for their research project Camp R.O.C.K.: Reaching Out and Connecting Kids, a music and social skills camp for children who are diagnosed with high-functioning autism.
“This innovative project presented not only a good fit for the purpose of the Baker Fund, but one that brings together Ohio University students, faculty and our surrounding community in an opportunity to serve and learn at the same time,” Baker Fund Committee Chairman Timothy Cyders said.
Brown and Benigno were two of seven faculty members to receive funding during the 2017 fall cycle of the awards, which are intended to help bring existing projects to completion. Up to $12,000 is available to faculty and staff through the program, and the Baker Fund committee selected four proposals totaling $43,000.
In addition to promoting fun and allowing children to explore their musicality, Camp R.O.C.K. serves a “unique need area” in terms of programming for children with high functioning autism, Brown said.
“There is summer programming for children with somewhat severe disabilities, but not so much for those children who don’t have an intellectual disability. These are children who do well in school, have excellent grades, but have trouble making friends,” she said. “You cannot learn social skills without practicing them with your peers.”
In 2016, Brown and Benigno hosted the first weeklong, summer music camp with the assistance of OHIO students. Ten children ages 7 to 12 attended, half of whom were diagnosed with high-functioning autism. The team’s goal was to discover interventions that enable children with autism to better integrate with children who are not on the autism spectrum.
Music was woven into each day’s activities, and the children created art, wrote songs, played instruments and listened to music. The camp culminated with a band performance.
“We had two bands. Together, the children developed a band name, chose what songs they performed and created rules for the band,” Brown said.
By the end of the week, the children were interacting comfortably with each other.
Brown and Benigno plan to use the Baker Fund award to employ more students as research assistants and hire a project coordinator for the upcoming camp. They also purchased a social skills assessment tool to increase the rigor of their research, as well as new equipment including iPads, musical instruments and a sound system.
Established in 1961, the John C. Baker Fund was endowed by a gift of more than $612,000 from 1926 College of Arts and Sciences graduate Edwin L. Kennedy and his wife, Ruth, a 1930 graduate of the Patton College of Education to support staff research, scholarship and creative projects. Baker Fund Awards are given once a semester and the deadline for the next round will be in October.
Other recipients of the fall Baker Fund awards included: Ilana Chertok and Zelalem Haile, nursing and social medicine; Daniel Skinner and Berkeley Franz, social medicine; and Ziad Abu-Rish, history.