December 15, 2023
Robert Glidden, past President, Executive Director, Treasurer, and Honorary Member of NASM died December 5, 2023, in Roanoke, Virginia. He was educated at the University of Iowa. He and his wife René moved to Lexington, Virginia in 2003. He’d just retired following his tenth year as president of Ohio University, after a long and distinguished career in higher education that included music deanships at Bowling Green State University and Florida State University, and service as provost at Florida State. Bob was prominent in multiple higher education efforts at state and national levels, often taking leadership roles in areas such as accreditation, education in the arts, mentorship, and academic administration. Groups and individuals who wanted to achieve something difficult regularly sought his help. He continued consulting long after formal retirement.
NASM was fortunate to receive Bob Glidden’s interest and stewardship. He became chief staff officer in 1972 after holding faculty positions at Wright State University, Indiana University, and the University of Oklahoma. During the three years of his tenure, NASM purchased its first office space in Reston, Virginia and upgraded its annual statistics program. Members approved revisions to association standards for baccalaureate and graduate degrees, and established standards and a new accrediting commission for community colleges. Task forces and members addressed the Education of the Music Consumer, possible new standards and an accrediting commission for non-degree-granting institutions, and standards revisions for teacher preparation degrees, all in consultation with interested parties. NASM celebrated its Fiftieth Anniversary in 1974.
After serving as NASM Treasurer from 1977 to 1982, he became Vice President, and in 1985, President. During his presidential term the association entered its first phase of computerization, upgraded training and re-training for visiting evaluators, started an extensive multi-year futures study, worked with other specialized accreditors to turn back a regional attack on professional undergraduate degrees, intensified its attention to minority access, and reached an agreement whereby NCATE would rely significantly on NASM reviews of teacher education programs in NASM member institutions. President Glidden brought new levels of attention to community service and preparatory programs in community settings. After 1988, he continued to support the association and its people in myriad ways.
NASM cultivates reasoned continuity and thoughtful change. Its continuity and stewardship of change rest on a foundation that supports many interacting parts. One of the foremost is helping people work together. In his times of greatest concentration on NASM, Bob Glidden was instrumental in strengthening the foundation and in building or adjusting many of the parts for the better. He worked with officers and membership and helped the organization reach numerous specific objectives. He brought his own verve and élan to all he did, filled every effort with infectious energy and passion for excellence. Although many changes have been made since, his ideas and wisdom still resonate in fundamental NASM structures and modes of action, in its philosophy of service to institutions and people devoted to music, in its dedication to music as a gift of communication and community.
In pursuing his endeavors, he sought the wellbeing of students and what could be done to give them the best possible education. He wanted students and his colleagues to have the best possible opportunities to use their talents and helped many enter and advance in the profession. He worked to improve systems and tools not to centralize decision-making and standardize results, but to help individual people and institutions perform at their highest in the local circumstances they knew best to reach goals they themselves had set given the realities of the field. He started with the basics of specific content and respect for his colleague’s abilities, their will to succeed, and the importance of where they were and what they were doing. It was this concern for the people of music coupled with an unshakeable commitment to the substance of music writ large that made Bob Glidden so effective and so respected in NASM and in higher education. All who knew him will surely miss the particular brightness he contributed to every occasion, a brightness that raised whatever level there was. Brightness in knowledge and skill, in perspective, in humor, in respect for people and their aspirations, in desire to improve, in willingness to help, in ability to find reason and balance, in capacity to see ahead, warn if necessary, and enable action in plenty of time.
NASM’s gratitude encompasses its sorrow: gratitude for achievement, and for an enduring example of inspiration and spirit.