Help Sandi become a Music Therapist!

Hello friends, I need your help!  This coming August, my dear friend Sandi Hammond will be starting her Master's in Music Therapy at Lesley University in Cambridge MA. I have known Sandi since our college days, and I can say without reservation that she will be AMAZING as a music therapist.  She is an incredible musician, a talented songwriter, a sensitive and caring person, and has a deep and vested interest in helping others through music.  


Sandi has been teaching and performing music for over 30 years and it has been the defining passion in her life. While for many musicians teaching and performing are deeply satisfying, for Sandi it wasn’t enough.   Her natural empathy and desire to help others kept creeping in. Here are just some examples of her caring in action:

-  In 2005, she taught voice to a 77 year old Parkinson’s patient, who benefited greatly from her positive approach.
-  In 2014, she volunteered teaching piano and voice at a residential school for girls who were escaping abusive and traumatic situations. She helped these girls by developing an improvisational technique that helped them to find healing -- in one girl’s words, “My soul felt free.  I felt like I could forget all my troubles.” 
- In 2014, Sandi founded the second all-transgender choir in the United States (as a volunteer), and teamed up with two musical therapists and a clinical pyschologist (who is himself trans) to develop a therapeutic approach to the choir. 
- More recently, she has created a volunteer program at a local hospital, bringing local musicians to the psychiatric ward to perform for the patients.
- She volunteers as a song leader for the Music Circle of the Depression and Bipolar Support Alliance. 

When you put it all together, it shows clearly what a great match this career is for Sandi’s natural talents. She already has a ton of research ideas and is reading extra music therapy books! 

While PhD programs often include teaching assistantships and other funding sources, masters programs usually do not.  Sandi has already landed the Expressive Therapies Dean's Scholarship Award for $9,000 (a one-time award over the life of the degree) — but the total program cost is $71,400!  With a scholarship and a family member covering part of this, she still needs to come up with $39,000 in tuition monies over the 3-year program, $18,000 per year in living expenses ($48,000 over the life of the program), and about $3,600 total for books and materials.

The reality is that even if we are able to help her through this campaign, Sandi will have to take out loans to meet all of her expenses — but I want to help her raise enough money that she can keep her debt as minimal as possible!  

Sandi will go to school full-time (3 courses per semester) starting in August. In order to pay for her non-tuition expenses such as rent, utilities, food etc. Sandi will keep her part time job as Music Director at a small church 10 hours a week, and also plans to continue teaching private music lessons 10 hours a week.  However if the teaching is too much with her course load, she may have to cut back; this of course puts her between a rock and a hard place in terms of potentially taking out more loans.

In addition to her church and lesson work, Sandi will need to participate in Lesley's excellent internship program.  This program is critical to her music therapy training — and they take anywhere from 15-25 hours a week and roughly 12 weeks at a time.  While they aren’t every semester, and Covid has pushed many internships into year two, she must complete them in order to win her degree.  And, they often lead to job placement upon graduation.  For this reason, it will be virtually impossible for her to work full-time while in school.  Sandi is single and so is doing this on her own.  (As a single mom myself, I really understand what a challenge this will be!!)  And, for Sandi to take this on at the age of 52 is no small risk in terms of finances. 

So with all of that in mind, my goal is to raise $20,000 for Sandi for her first year of school.  100% of the funds raised here will go directly to tuition.  Please give what you can!  I’m proud of Sandi because she has managed to get her current living expenses very low — about $1,500 per month (including rent, car insurance, everything), or $9,000 for the first 6 months of school; and, she has been able to save about $10,000 in cash to put towards school, despite having just been laid off and from a job that only paid $16/hour. However, this was only possible while she was working full time prior to school; she will not be able to replicate this kind of savings effort during school for obvious reasons.

SANDI'S 2021 SUMMER AND FALL TUITION PAYMENT SCHEDULE   (Does not include living expenses)

May                    $   600 (summer tuition)
June                   $2,135 (summer plus fall)
July                     $2,135 (summer plus fall)
August              $1,535 (fall)
September     $1,535 (fall)
October           $1,535 (fall)
November      $1,535 (fall)
Book costs:    $   750 (summer and fall)

TOTAL:             $11,760


Of the $11,760, the Dean’s scholarship previously mentioned will cover $1,800 of this per semester (the school mandates this payment schedule).  And, a family member has pledged to pay $3,330 for the fall semester.  While she can take out low-interest federal loans to cover the remaining $6,630, it goes without saying that taking on school debt at the age of 52, with a possible PhD on the horizon, is not desirable.

I’ve known Sandi for 35 years, and have seen her go through the ups and downs of a music career that has not exactly been lucrative.  I feel that this is her true calling, and a way to integrate her entrepreneurial spirit, caring soul and musical skill into one unified successful path. And, it comes with a hefty price tag.  Still, I see that she is determined and excited and willing to be frugal, diligent and focused.  And the proof is in the pudding — in her recent Intro to Music Therapy course, she garnered a grade of 98! I believe in her, and you should too!  Please give what you can to support her!

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P.S.  If you'd like to hear to know a little more about Sandi, check out the below!

Biography
Sandi Hammond has a BA in Music from Earlham College, where she was a merit-based fine arts scholar in music and also the recipient of a Ford Foundation Fellowship in Choral Conducting. In her early twenties she sang as a member with the Tanglewood Festival Chorus and the John Oliver Chorale. A grant recipient from the MIT Council for the Arts, Sandi has performed as a vocalist on WGBH radio, both as a classical singer and a jazz artist with the vocal trio ESP, with whom she has also sung at notable clubs such as the Regattabar and the Soho series Out By Ten in New York City. In 2000 she released a track as a singer-songwriter as one of 27 women artists on the all-women’s compilation CD, RESPOND, which was picked by Columbia Records and which raised over $400,000 for an area domestic violence shelter by the same name.

Sandi has over 20 years’ experience teaching voice, beginning piano, songwriting, and ear training. In 2014 she founded the Butterfly Music Transgender Chorus the 2nd all trans chorus in the nation, which has received media coverage by The New York Times, Associated Press, Boston Globe and Oprah Magazine.

She has been having fun with the Acapella app while trapped at home!
https://www.facebook.com/SandiButterflyTalk/videos/1689067541272336

Discography
https://www.allmusic.com/artist/sandi-hammond-mn0000288740

One of her many original songs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1UX2SYRrnyk

From her days with ESP Jazz trio
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EsDXxKXcY24