Week 1: Organizational Culture at DIAL (Rowan CMS)

I officially finished my first week at my internship at the Rowan Community School of Music (CMS) as a part of Americans for the Arts’ (AFTA’s) Diversity in Arts Leadership (DIAL) Program. The Rowan CMS is a nonprofit arts organization based at Rowan University in Glassboro, New Jersey. What I now know as Rowan began in the early 1900s as a normal school with the goal of training people to become teachers in South Jersey. Between 1934 to 1937, the school expanded and garnered a national reputation as an educational leader. Later, when it hosted a conference between President Lyndon Johnson and Soviet Premier Aleksei Kosygin, the school’s reputation skyrocketed. In 1992, an industrialist named Henry Rowan and his wife Betty donated $100 million to the school, which led to the school later naming itself Rowan University. The Rowan CMS was later established as a means of connecting the University to the community through the arts.

The vision statement of the Rowan CMS is to “provide the diverse community of students in the greater Rowan University region with high quality music instruction and performance opportunities that promote their continuing artistic growth and a lifelong appreciation of music.” The values include the following statements about community music: providing a “challenging and nurturing environment that helps students of all backgrounds reach their greatest potential,” dedicating itself to “excellent instruction and performance,” preparing students for “continued music study,” and instilling music in both its performers and audiences. 

I was pleasantly greeted with a very friendly, communicative work environment in that my supervisors there were open to conversations and introductory meetings. The way in which people work at this organization is very interesting because, rather than starting and ending at a specific structured time, people are more likely to take on large long-term projects in which they can work on in their own time. Due to the presence of many interconnected long-term projects, people communicate via emails and are constantly on the clock with emailing and texting one another, and meetings are often held in increments of at least an hour to make sure that every person (down to the intern level) knows exactly what role they play in the overall project in order to see it through. These exchanges in emails, texts, and meetings often end up being rather informal (but respectful, of course) because frequent and constant communication means that everyone knows each other and is comfortable enough around each other to use that informal language.