The University of South Carolina School of Music takes great pride in celebrating its faculty and their accomplishments. Congratulations to these recent award recipients.
Governor’s Awards for the Arts
Gail V. Barnes (music education/director of the USC String Project) is the recipient of a 2025 South Carolina Governor’s Award for the Arts.
This award recognizes six individuals and organizations in the state for their outstanding
achievements and contributions to the arts in South Carolina. Recipients are selected
from a list of nominees recommended by a panel for the South Carolina Governor’s Award
for the Arts and then voted on by appointed members of the South Carolina Arts Commission
Board from nominations.
Winner of the Individual category, Barnes credits the University of South Carolina String Project to directly creating a community of string musicians. She believes her greatest contribution to the state are the 150 teachers who have graduated from the program during her tenure.
“In the 28 years as Director of the University of South Carolina String Project, I’ve had the privilege of supervising 135 graduates. In addition, there are currently 25 undergraduate and graduate music education majors in the program. These 160 teachers will continue to inspire thousands of children through music. As an arts educator, this is extremely gratifying,” says Barnes.
Barnes received her degrees from the University of Michigan (BM, MM) and Ohio State University (PhD).
USC Faculty Awards
Two School of Music faculty members have been recognized as outstanding faculty by the University of South Carolina’s Office of the Provost.
Julie Hubbert (LaDare Robinson Memorial Professor of Music Professor, Music; Film & Media Studies
/ Music History) received the 2025 Michael J. Mungo Graduate Teaching Award. Testimonials
from students and colleagues highlight Julie’s ability “to make complex subjects accessible
and engaging, her supportive teaching style, and her significant influence on their
academic and professional growth.”
Hubbert is a three-time USC Faculty Awards winner. She received the Michael J. Mungo Undergraduate Teaching Award in 2006 and the Cantey Faculty Award in 2013. She is also a two-time National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Fellowship recipient — in 2016 for The Auteur as Audiophile: Music in New Hollywood Film and in 2018 for Technology Listening and Labor: Music in New Hollywood Film.
“I’m deeply grateful to all the graduate students I’ve taught and mentored over the years. Several current GAs nominated me for this award, and many past GAs wrote letters of support, so it's especially meaningful. I’m also indebted to my colleagues at the School of Music for recruiting such wonderful graduate students,” says Hubbard. “One of the core tenets of the School’s mission statement is to encourage our students to become diversely skilled musicians, so it's been a privilege helping graduate students think more deeply and broadly about musical culture, and to help them develop their skills and personalities as classroom teachers.”
As an arts educator, Hubbert has advised dozens of graduate students. Her dedication to mentoring has guided numerous students to prestigious post-graduate programs and international fellowships and her commitment to developing graduate teaching assistants has equipped them with essential skills for academic careers.
She holds degrees from Yale University (PhD), the Manhattan School of Music (MM) and the University of Southern California (BM).
David Kirkland Garner (Composition/Theory) received the 2025 USC Educational Foundation Research Award
for Humanities and Social Sciences for seeking “to make time and history audible,
particularly through an exploration of archival recordings documenting the musical
traditions of the U.S. South.”
“I’m deeply honored to receive this award from the Office of the Provost. This recognition motivates me to keep pushing forward—to stay curious, to explore, to research, and to create,” says Garner. “I’m especially grateful to my wonderful colleagues at the School of Music for their generous support, for nominating me, and for advocating on my behalf.”
In addition to this award, Garner has received multiple grants for his creative projects, including a Charles Ives Scholarship from the American Academy of Arts & Letters, an ASCAP Young Composer Award, and first prizes in the OSSIA, Red Note, and NACUSA competitions. He holds degrees from Duke University, the University of Michigan, and Rice University.
Cauthen Fellowship
Emily Ruth Allen, (Music and Music History / USC School of Music / University of South Carolina Institute
for Southern Studies), is one of six scholars awarded a 2025 Cauthen Fellowship from
the Alabama Folklife Association. The program awards one-year fellowships to individual
scholars to research an Alabama folk tradition. The Alabama Folklife Association was
founded in 1980 to document, preserve, present, and promote the folkways of Alabama.
“The Cauthen Fellowship will allow me to travel to the 2025 Gulf Coast Caribbean Carnival to learn more about its practices, including the role of music like soca. This event is an important way to better understand the connections between Alabama and the Caribbean. Those connections have always been there, but this Carnival explicitly acknowledges them,” says Allen.
She holds a PhD in Musicology from Florida State University. Read more about Allen and her work here.
Academic Areas at the USC School of Music
The USC School of Music Academics department offers degrees in Composition, Music Education, Music History, Music Industry Studies, Music Theory and Music Leadership. Our students are taught the knowledge and skills they need to have professional options in their chosen fields. Our well-rounded philosophy, high-value proposition, and leadership training nurture the music teachers, composers, researchers, and theorists of tomorrow.