The Graduate School has selected Allison Thabit as the April 2024 GradBird Scholar recipient. GradBird Scholar is an initiative that recognizes graduate students for their scholarly endeavors at Illinois State University.
Thabit earned her B.F.A. in jazz studies with a focus on trumpet as her primary instrument. Beyond her studies, she works as an activity assistant at a nursing home. Additionally, she showcases her musical talents by playing trumpet, keyboard, and providing vocals for four bands of diverse genres in the Bloomington-Normal area. Recently, she has taken an interest in learning historical sewing methods and is honing her skills in this craft.
What is your favorite part of your program?
I love that we have the opportunity to work at four different practicum locations, practicing music therapy with a variety of populations and settings to help us learn what we want to do in our careers.
Do you work with a specific faculty/staff member to help with your research? What has your experience been like working with them?
I work with Dr. Andrea Crimmins who is my thesis advisor. She is knowledgeable about the field and has helped to guide my research questions. I am at the beginning of my research phase, and most of the work I’ve done thus far has been mostly self-driven as I am responsible for finding, reading, and synthesizing the available research for my literature review. However, I am looking forward to the next steps of completing my research.
Can you explain your research and the importance of it within your field?
My research looks at the effect of instrument playing on the behavioral and psychological effects of dementia (often abbreviated as BPSD) which is an area of research that we don’t know a lot about yet. I hope my research adds to the body of knowledge about this type of music therapy for this population and allows future clinicians to incorporate the findings into practice.
Why do you enjoy researching this topic, and what more do you hope to learn about it?
I became interested in this topic because of my employment at a local memory care nursing home as an activity assistant. I call bingo, paint pictures, play games, and form connections with many people with various forms and severities of the umbrella of “dementia.” Through talking to the patients’ family members, I have been able to learn about their personalities before their conditions.
I am hoping to be as effective as possible in my work in order to help people with this disease. I want to learn what sorts of approaches have worked in the past in addition to approaches that have not been as successful. My research is informed by the available research and put forth a specific protocol to decrease BPSD and increase quality of life. This will be tested using standardized tools like the Cornell scale for depression in dementia and the MMSE, the mini-mental state exam, among others.
As I progress in my research, I hope to learn what sorts of facilitation techniques elicit the greatest results for this population and find out what still needs to be explored in the future.
What do you hope further research about this topic will do for the greater good of society?
My hope is that more research will be conducted about instrument playing in music therapy for a wider variety of populations and conditions since the joy of creating music and playing instruments is a universal experience. I believe everyone has the capacity to make art and joy, and musical instruments can be a wonderful way to channel one’s artistic spirit. I want my research (and music therapy research in general) to clarify how music can be helpful to everyone and show that anyone can participate in music regardless of musical knowledge or background. The language of music is a wonderful way to connect with people, no matter if they are similar or very different from ourselves.
Would you like to highlight anything else about your research or promote anything specific you are involved in?
I play in a few different bands in the Bloomington-Normal area. One is called Soft Coup, an all-original psychedelic rock band featuring the song writing of Hannah Russel. I play trumpet and synthesizer and a little bit of backup vocals. Front Street Collective is a hip-hop, rock, and R&B band that plays both covers and originals from various members. The Sweet Nothings are a traditional jazz group that plays swing tunes influenced by New Orleans and guitarist Django Reinhardt. We often play for swing dancers who come out to our shows. Finally, Grey Heron is a duo of myself (singing and playing keys) and drummer Ben Wyman where we play my original songs.
