Researcher - Educator - Flutist
Programming & Decision-Making
Through one of her courses this fall, Alexandra completed a small study on the programming decisions of high school band directors participating in their Maryland school district festival, an experience that is bound by the state repertoire list. The findings from this study led Alexandra to more questions than answers, inspiring her to pursue continued work on how band directors program, why they make certain choices, and what biases and values impact their decisions.
Multilingual Learners in Ensembles
COMING SOON - Presentation at the Illinois Music Educators Conference (IMEC): Teaching Multilingual Learners in Music Ensembles (January 2026) Alexandra spent five years teaching band and general music at Annapolis High School in Annapolis Maryland, where nearly two-thirds of the student body is hispanic and Spanish-speaking. With so little research on the experiences of multilingual learners in music classrooms, Alexandra is committed to learning more about what students need and how teachers can support them. She is currently devising an interview protocol for multilingual high school band students in the Chicagoland area.
Conducting & Recognition Memory
Alexandra recently joined Dr. Steve Morrison, Dr. Mark Montemayor, and master's research assistant, Xincheng Lu, to explore the impact of audiovisual congruency in conducting on recognition memory. This project will build upon Dr. Morrison's extensive work on conducting and cognition. More details are forthcoming!
Music for Childhood
Well-Being Initiative (MCWI)
Alexandra is currently serving as the Lead Research Assistant for Evanston's first Latino cohort of the Music for Childhood Well-Being Initiative (MCWI). MCWI is co-directed by Dr. Sarah Bartolome of the Bienen School of Music and Dr. Nicole St. Jean of the Feinberg School of Medicine, both housed at Northwestern University. Through seed funding from Northwestern's Robert Buffett Institute for Global Affairs, major grants from the Grammy and Cyrus Tang Foundations, and a partnership with the Rogers Research group, the MCWI research team is investigating the physiological and psychological effects of choral singing and breath work. MCWI choirs have been established at England's York St. John University, Mexico's Universidad Iberoamericana, China's Hainan Normal University, and the the University of Miami's Frost School of Music.