Melissa CoxAssociate Professor of Practice Emerita of Music

• DMAUniversity of Arizona

Melissa Cox is currently a senior lecturer in Music Theory at Emory University in Atlanta. Previously she taught AP Music Theory for fifteen years at St. Gregory College Preparatory School in Tucson, Arizona. Her undergraduate and master's degrees are in music and musicology from Harvard University, and she earned a DMA in conducting from the University of Arizona. While at St. Gregory she developed a wide-ranging curriculum of classes in music history, music appreciation, and music theory as well as performance classes.

Dr. Cox's experience with the AP Music Theory curriculum and examination is extensive. In addition to teaching the class for many years, she has been an AP Music Theory Faculty Consultant for seven years and recently completed a term on the Test Development Committee for the AP examination. She is currently the Consultant and Materials Reviewer for the AP Central/College Board Music Theory web site and is about to begin a term as College Board Advisor to the AP Music Theory Test Development Committee. Dr. Cox has presented or co-presented workshops on the AP Music Theory curriculum and examination in Arizona, Chicago, Miami, Texas and Las Vegas, and at Chapman, Indiana and Yale Universities.

In addition to her choral work at St. Gregory, Dr. Cox has held choral positions at Smith College and the University of Arizona and served as organist and choir director in churches in Massachusetts and Arizona. A past president of the Choral Directors of Arizona, she has been awarded the Arizona Outstanding Music Educators Award and the Choral Directors of Arizona Lifetime Recognition Award. She has been a regular lecturer on opera for Arizona Opera and the Opera Guild of Southern Arizona.