James McMillan

Abstract

The process of recruitment and retention in any high school band program is a crucial
one. Band students have the choice to be in the band program each year. In many schools,
the band program is offered as an elective; therefore, students have the opportunity to drop
out of the band program at any time. Consequently, it is the job of the band director to not
only keep the recruitment rate at a high level but to also retain the current students in order to
have a successful band program.
This project will help provide band directors with some potential positive and
negative recruitment and retention strategies that they can apply to their programs. While
some key factors of recruitment and retention can be universally used across the board in all
economic situations, band directors in rural areas often face their own set of challenges. For
the first part of this project, three rural band directors took part in a questionnaire about
recruitment and retention. For the second part, the high school band students and the 8th
grade band students in Jefferson County took part in a survey.… (meer)