MUNCIE, Ind.(NewsLink) - The director of “Pride of Mid-America” Marching Band, Caroline Hand, is celebrating her five year anniversary leading the Cardinals.
Her passion is fueled by the band students', but the students said, Hand brings the “hype.”
“Dr. Hand is so incredibly supportive and always brings the hype and she’ll say that the band brings the hype no matter what and she’s always exemplifying all of the excitement and encouragement throughout rehearsals and games,” said senior Sarah Wagner.
Hand’s band career began in 6th grade and played the flute. She only had one female band director while growing up.
“She was my middle school band director and her name was Lean McLean. She still teaches at Griffin Middle School down in Texas and you know I saw her and I figured, well everybody does this.”
She went to school for music education and fell in love with teaching during her undergraduate degree.
Like Hand, many of her own students in marching band at Ball State have similar experiences.
“My original band director was a female, but otherwise the rest have been male up until Dr. Hand,” said Wagner. “The general consensus is that many people had her [Hand] as the first female director in their band career.”
When asked if there needs to be more female band directors, Hand said, “absolutely.”
“I think that the more diverse any profession is the better the quality goes up because you have many more perspectives contribute to making that activity or endeavor or whatever it happens to be even better,” she said.
