Open SUNY Online Teaching Ambassador 2019: Stony Brook – Matt Brounley

Matt Brounley is a PhD candidate at Stony Brook University focusing on popular music and sound studies. His dissertation, “That Sound in your Head: Guitar Tone and Entrepreneurial Values” combines approaches from ethnomusicology, music theory, and sound studies to investigate how guitar sounds have been packaged, sold, and valued through the 20th and 21st centuries. Part of his dissertation is based on his career in the musical instrument industry. As an online instructor, Mr. Brounley designed Stony Brook University music department’s first course dedicated to hip-hop studies. The course design combines non-synchronous learning with weekly synchronous discussion groups surrounding course topics. He has presented his methods and results from his course design at the Stony Brook Center for Excellence in Learning and Teaching. He also serves as an executive for the Stony Brook Graduate Student Organization and teaches “analog” courses at CUNY and Eugene Lang College of Liberal Arts on Popular Music History. He currently lives in Brooklyn with his fiance Jess and his dog Monty.