Courtney Crappell

Biography

Courtney Crappell didn’t set out to be a dean. His dream as a kid growing up in south Louisiana was to become a piano teacher so that he could be part of sharing the joy of making music with anyone willing to learn. That dream led him from his early guitar lessons with his dad and Cajun dance-hall gigs to a lifetime spent discovering how the arts shape people, communities, and even cities. It also led him to the University of Missouri-Kansas City, where he now serves as Dean of the Conservatory.

As the first in his family to attend college, Crappell personally knows the power of public universities to open doors. “LSU changed everything for me,” he says. “It was where I realized that higher education isn’t just about knowledge, but about discovering belonging.” That belief has guided every stage of his career, and it continues to shape his work in Kansas City.

Since his arrival at UMKC in 2022, Crappell has led the Conservatory with a simple but ambitious idea: that a community-centered and integrated arts environment, where music, dance, and theatre work in rhythm together, can prepare artists to creatively and constructively engage and improve the world. If you ask him what drives these efforts, he’ll point to Kansas City itself. “This city already breathes creativity,” he says. “Our role is to amplify that—to make sure the Conservatory is not a tower on a hill, but a hub for connection and a catalyst for creativity.”

Under his leadership, the Conservatory has embraced a new vision that connects academic excellence with community purpose. A major expansion and renovation of the Olson Performing Arts Center is now well over halfway to its fundraising goal, promising new rehearsal and performance spaces filled with light, sound, and shared imagination. His team has launched projects that blend artistry with service. For example, the Healing & Harmony hospital-based performance series brings live music into healthcare settings and recently earned the UMKC Trustees Vision Forward Award. Partnerships with the Kansas City Ballet and 91.9 Classical KC are creating new pathways for dancers, musicians, and audiences alike.

Crappell is quick to say that the Conservatory’s strength is its people: faculty who innovate, students who collaborate, and staff who make the impossible look routine. In leadership, he strives for an approach that is transparent and collaborative, believing that faculty meetings and retreats should end with laughter and new ideas scribbled on whiteboards, and that the goal is to be truthful, build trust, and keep the focus on people. Before Kansas City, Crappell served as director of the Moores School of Music and associate dean of the Kathrine G. McGovern College of the Arts at the University of Houston. Those experiences allowed him to hone skills in fundraising, curricular design, and community partnerships, and his work there established a record of growth and a reputation for turning good ideas into real programs.

A scholar and writer, Crappell is the author of Teaching Piano Pedagogy: A Guidebook for Training Effective Teachers (Oxford University Press, 2019), a volume described as “essential to the professional pedagogue’s bookshelf.” His research on music-making and well-being has appeared in Psychology of Music and other journals, and for fifteen years he wrote a monthly column for American Music Teacher, exploring everything from practice habits to the digital future of teaching. Through all of it, his focus has stayed the same: how artists learn, grow, and give back.

Crappell also serves nationally as a Commissioner on the National Association of Schools of Music (NASM) Commission on Accreditation and as Director for the South-Central Division of the Music Teachers National Association (MTNA), where he sits on the national board. He is an examiner (piano) for the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto and has been recognized as an MTNA Foundation Fellow, among other honors.

Today, when he’s not connecting in meetings or in a concert hall, you might find Crappell at a local skate park, trying to learn tricks no one his age has any business attempting. He finds the process equally humbling and exhilarating, and a reminder that creativity, like balance, takes courage and a sense of humor. Whether he’s leading a major initiative, mentoring students in the studio, or carving lines under the open sky, he keeps chasing the same idea: that the arts, when shared openly and fearlessly, have the power to move us all forward.