Rate My Professor Bob Duke

Robert A. Duke, known professionally as Bob Duke, holds the Marlene and Morton Meyerson Centennial Professorship in Music and Human Learning and serves as Head of Music and Human Learning and Director of the Center for Music Learning in the Sarah and Ernest Butler School of Music at the University of Texas at Austin. He is also a Clinical Professor in the Dell Medical School, University of Texas and University of Texas System Distinguished Teaching Professor, and Elizabeth Shatto Massey Distinguished Fellow in Teacher Education. Duke earned his PhD in Music Education in 1983, Master of Music in Percussion Performance in 1977, and Bachelor of Music Education summa cum laude in 1976, all from The Florida State University. Earlier in his career, he worked as a studio musician, public school music teacher in Georgia and Indiana, and associate instructor at Indiana University and Florida State University. He served as Assistant Professor of Music Education at Kent State University from 1984 to 1985 and joined UT Austin in 1985 as Assistant Professor of Music, advancing through Associate Professor to full Professor in 1996. Duke was the founding director of the psychology of learning program at the Colburn Conservatory of Music in Los Angeles and has worked closely with at-risk children in public schools and the juvenile justice system.

Duke's research specializes in human learning and behavior, including procedural memory consolidation and refinement, skill development, and attention allocation during music practice and teacher-learner interactions. He authored Intelligent Music Teaching: Essays on the Core Principles of Effective Instruction (2005, multiple editions), The Habits of Musicianship: A Radical Approach to Beginning Band (2008, with Jim L. Byo), and co-authored Brain Briefs (with Art Markman). He developed Scribe 5 behavior analysis software and has published extensively on music pedagogy, including papers such as Duke, Simmons, and Cash (2009) on characteristics of practice behavior and Duke and Simmons (2006) on the nature of expertise in music teaching. His awards include the University of Texas System Regents’ Outstanding Teaching Award (2009), induction into the UT System Academy of Distinguished Teachers (2016), MENC Senior Researcher Award, Innovative Instructional Technology Award, and multiple endowed fellowships like the E. William Doty Professorship in Fine Arts. Duke has served on editorial boards for the Journal of Research in Music Education and Bulletin of the Council for Research in Music Education, and co-hosts the public radio program and podcast Two Guys on Your Head produced by KUT Radio.