Dr. Mark Huggins, DMA

Professor of Worship Arts

Dr. Mark Huggins is an Assistant Professor of Music Theory and Worship Arts at Grand Canyon University (GCU), where he teaches undergraduate courses and oversees the worship arts music courses and fine arts music theory courses. He is also a member of the One Foundation advisory committee and Worship Arts Leadership team at GCU.  Dr. Huggins’ research and interests are on popular music education and developing an engaging and relevant curriculum for twenty-first-century music students. In his dissertation titled “The Pedagogical Reasoning and Action of Popular Music Theory Professors in Higher Popular Music Education Programs,” Dr. Huggins focused on current methods for popular music pedagogy and made recommendations for curricular development in popular and commercial music programs. His experience performing popular music and academic training in western European classical music styles has enabled Dr. Huggins to bridge the perceived gap between classical and contemporary music styles and develop an emergent curriculum for modern students that is adaptive to a variety of educational goals.