Name: Emmett Goods
URI Title: Assistant Professor of Music
Email: emmettgoods@uri.edu
Pronouns: he/him/his

One of our newest faculty members on campus, Assistant Professor of Music Emmett Goods, is no stranger to professing the wisdom of jazz. As a recent Ph.D. recipient from West Virginia University — where his dissertation focused on the Hard Bop Trombone Players from 1955-1964 — Goods has taught at numerous other colleges and universities, including Benedict College, West Virginia University, Goodwin University, and Springfield College. When it comes to his motivating factor for joining the URI community, Goods says he was drawn to the smallest state in the nation due to both the reputation of URI’s Music program and the proximity to his family. 

So far, Goods has taught and will continue to teach MUS 110-510W: Applied Jazz Trombone, AAF/MUS 208: History of Hip-Hop in Black American Culture, MUS 301: Music as a Form of Social Protest, MUS 391/591: Big Band, and MUS 591: Graduate Independent Study. Keeping in line with the research he pursued in his dissertation, Goods is hoping to make an album during his time at URI that is, as he says, “representative of the hard bop trombone style.” As a previous student — and now professor — of the fine arts, Goods understands the value of a liberal arts education such as that found at URI’s College of Arts and Sciences. “The liberal arts allows a student to step outside of their discipline and begin to experience the world through learning about different cultures,” he says. “That new cultural competency will then follow the student into life, giving them a more holistic view and ultimately making them better at whatever they do.”

Goods encourages music students and other students within the College of Arts and Sciences to take advantage of the diverse curriculum opportunities at their reach. “Music students should take this time to expose themselves to as many different styles of music as possible,” he says. “They should also engage as much as possible with technology as it will play a huge role in their careers once they leave. They should get good at something outside of performance ie teaching, business or research as a career in music is more than just performing. The liberal arts students should take advantage of the Gen Ed program at URI. The program really has so many things that you can engage with outside of your discipline that will prepare you for a lifetime.”

Read more about Goods’ courses on the history of hip-hop and music as a form of social protest — and see a short video of him performing — here. 

~Written by Chase Hoffman, Writing & Rhetoric and Anthropology Double Major, URI Class of December 2020