As the football opener looms in day, the Tennessee Tech Golden Eagle Marching Band will take to the field with one of its highest membership levels in school history.
Director of Bands Jeffrey Miller said the marching band currently consists of approximately 190 members. Miller said the university has seen a significant increase in participation from students who are not music majors since he began his tenure in 2018.
“I think it’s partly due to growth within the school of music itself,” Miller said, “I think it’s partly due to growth at the university and, you know, we’ve made a pretty concerted effort to be more focused in recruiting.”
Miller said the band represents a microcosm of the entire campus with students participating from every college within the university. Miller said the current membership exceeds the national average metric of a marching band representing one percent of a university’s total population.
“I think we do a really good job of providing a quality experience for our students, balancing the fact that most of them are not music majors and a lot of students have a really good time with that and so when they realize that they can come to Tennessee Tech University, they can major in something as intensive as mechanical engineering and they can still continue to play in the marching band and play in other bands in the school of music that they love, it’s kind of a no-brainer for them,” Miller said.
Miller said the university administration has provided consistent support through funding for new uniforms and instruments over the last eight years. Miller said he considers a membership of 250 students to be the sustainable long-term goal based on current facilities and budget.
“We involve our student leaders in the process where they’re asked to kind of help me shape options for what our halftime show could be for the season and then we typically present those three options to the membership and allow our students to vote on what that halftime show looks like, so there’s a lot more ownership that the students have invested in the program and in the music that they’re performing because they actually are the ones who voted for it,” Miller said.
Miller said the band continues to apply annually for a position in the Macy’s Day Parade as a long-term goal for the program. Miller said the students serve as ambassadors for the university by performing at high school exhibitions and home football games.
“But I think one of the things that we certainly see is that we see a robust population of students on our campus who are, that they want to be excellent musicians, they want to represent the university largely,” Miller said. “Again most of them are not music majors and so they don’t have to be part of the marching band, they get to be part of the marching band. And so they want to be there.”
Tennessee Tech will host a Bands of America regional competition on October 30 and October 31 featuring 41 high schools from across the southeastern United States and as far away as Illinois. Miller said the Golden Eagle Marching Band will perform an exhibition for the visiting programs during the event.
