Music Therapy in a Community Music School

Ronna Kaplan, Director of the Department of Music Therapy since 2004, has been a music therapist at The Music Settlement since 1988, serving clients ranging from premature infants to adults through the age of 103 years with varied disabilities and levels of functioning.  She has conducted research on the effect of music on premature infants in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit at the Cleveland Clinic and on music therapy program goals and outcomes for clients with autism spectrum diagnoses at The Music Settlement.  Her special interests are young children and individuals with diagnoses on the autism spectrum, language delays and/or problems in the area of social skills, as well as teen parents or those with mental illness. She has supervised many music therapy interns at The Music Settlement and was instrumental in developing the department’s Outcomes-Based Measurement tool and program.  She served as Interim Co-Executive Director of The Music Settlement and as Acting Director of the Performing Arts Department/Music School for several months in 2007. Ronna also taught Music Therapy Practicum and Adapted Percussion classes part-time at Baldwin-Wallace College for 14 years.