About

the writer & composer

Donna Cypret

A BRIEF LIFE SEGMENT- BOTH PROFESSIONAL and PERSONAL:

My professional career got a head start during my years of study at the University of Wichita in Kansas, which became Wichita State University at the end of my last year there. I felt very fortunate to receive a two-year Fellowship, thanks to the Barbershop Harmony Society, to study and teach music at the Institute of Logopedics while finishing my bachelors degree and beginning my masters program. After completing that program with my thesis: A MUSICAL TEST FOR THE DISCRIMINATION OF RHYTHM, MELODY, AND TIMBRE IN HARD-OF-HEARING AND NORMAL-HEARING CHILDREN, I graduated with a bachelors and masters degree in Music Education. The latter had a specialty in Logopedics, a very new field, with the name “Logopedics” later changed to Special Music Education.

This experience at Wichita State led to wonderful and exciting jobs, and professional recognition, most of which I attribute to all of those professionals who were involved in my new graduate program. Besides my public school experience and certifications for teaching All-Level Music, English Language Arts, and ESL, I have taught JUCO, college and university students from freshman through doctoral levels, and have also been an administrator.

Also included as part of my major education and inspiration are: Central State College / University of Central Oklahoma, Edmond, and the University of Illinois, Urbana/Champaign.

My career had reached a high point when illnesses struck my family. See: “Why TEST REVUE Came To Be,” on this website. That period was when I began writing and composing in what little time there was after teaching and being there for my family. After some very hard work, I later became a member of ASCAP and am happy to say that some of these songs are being played on Spotify. (See: DONNA LEA.) Thanks to God and the Houston Medical Center, my parents and brother survived much longer had we not gone to Texas. I would drop everything and do it again, because family comes first. God bless you all! … Donna