Rockin’ Staff Bios
Meet the Education staff at the Rock Hall!
L-R: John Goehrke, education coordinator; Jason Hanely, director of education; Lauren Onkey, vice president of education and public programs; Stephanie Heriger, education programs manager; Kathryn Metz, education instructor.
Dr. Lauren Onkey: Vice President of Education and Public Programs
Lauren Onkey holds an M.A. and Ph.D. in English from the University of Illinois-Urbana Champaign. She taught in the English department at Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana for fourteen years. While at Ball State, she taught courses in postcolonial literature, cultural studies and writing at both the undergraduate and graduate level, and was the recipient of research fellowships at Oxford University and Boston College. She also served for five years as Director of Graduate Programs in English. She is currently appointed as a Presidential Fellow and teaches in the SAGES general education program at Case Western Reserve University. In addition to teaching rock history, Lauren has taught units on popular music in cultural studies, literature, and women’s studies classes throughout her career. She has published essays and book chapters on Van Morrison, Jimi Hendrix, U2, and Bruce Springsteen, and has presented numerous papers at national and international literature, popular music studies, cultural studies, and pedagogy conferences. Her book, Celtic Soul Brothers: Blackness and Transatlantic Irish Identity, is forthcoming from Routledge.
Jason Hanley: Director of Education
Jason Hanley holds an M.A. in Music and is currently a Ph.D. candidate in Musicology and Composition at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. He has taught courses in music history, electronic music, and popular music studies at Hofstra University, the State University of New York at Stony Brook (including the Stony Brook Pre-College Program and the Humanities Institute), and Case Western Reserve University. He has published articles in books and journals on the topics of popular music, film music, and music technology, and has delivered papers at meetings of the International Association for the Study of Popular Music, Society for Ethnomusicology, American Musicological Society, Americana Music Association, Feminist Theory and Music and numerous other conferences. Active in the music industry since 1988, Jason has performed on, composed for, and produced numerous recordings and has performed live with many bands. He continues to record with his current musical project Radiophonic (Intentcity Records). Jason is a guest editor for an upcoming special issue on pedagogy for the Journal of Popular Music Studies where he also serves as an editorial board member. He is a member of the International Association for the Study of Popular Music where he has served many years as an executive committee member, and is currently appointed as a Presidential Fellow in the SAGES general education program at Case Western Reserve University.
Stephanie Heriger: Education Programs Manager
Stephanie Heriger holds a B.A., magna cum laude, in Music from Dickinson College and an M.A. in Historical Musicology from the University of Michigan, where she is also a Ph.D. candidate. Her dissertation research focuses primarily on twentieth-century American music and she has presented on various popular music topics, including hip-hop with a paper entitled “Beats, Rhymes, and Life: Afrohumanism and the Native Tongues Family.” She has taught both music history and music appreciation classes at the University of Michigan and general humanities courses at Wayne State University. Before coming to Cleveland, Stephanie taught for New Orleans’ Recovery School District as an elementary special education inclusion teacher, post-Katrina, where she actively worked to integrate the arts into her own core-curriculum teaching. Stephanie has been active in arts education and outreach for the last ten years, working alongside both music and visual arts organizations in New Orleans, Louisiana; Southeast Michigan and her hometown of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Most recently, she served as the Assistant Director for Country Day Creative Arts, a nationally recognized summer arts academy in Metairie, Louisiana. A trained pianist and singer, Stephanie is also an active performer.
John Goehrke: Education Coordinator
John Goehrke holds a B.A. in Music from Kenyon College, where he graduated cum laude in May 2005. He volunteered for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum as a member of the Teen Advisory Board in 1999 and interned for the education and development departments in the summers of 2003 and 2004. Between 1998-2000, John was a music journalist for the Cleveland Plain Dealer’s NEXT (News Exclusively for Teens) section. During his senior year at Kenyon, John was awarded distinction by the music department for his thesis entitled, “The Message: A Study of Authenticity and Stylistic Change Within Hip-Hop as a Cultural Movement.” John has made several public presentations to universities, most recently as a keynote speaker at Denison University’s “Culture Jam Week” in April 2009 where he discussed the origins of hip-hop culture. Since joining the Rock Hall, John has helped to develop the award-winning distance learning program, On the Road, and has had an active role in the Museum’s public programs, serving as the Event Manager for the American Music Masters tributes to Jerry Lee Lewis in 2007 and Les Paul in 2008. In March 2009, John was selected as a juror for the American Association of Museums MUSE awards for Media & Technology.
Kathryn Metz: Education Instructor
Kathryn Metz is the Education Instructor at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum. Kathryn holds an M.M. and is a Ph.D. candidate in Ethnomusicology at The University of Texas at Austin where she is writing her dissertation about pop music in the urban Amazon of Peru. Her research has focused on Latin American popular musics, bluegrass, cosmopolitanism, indie rock and women in punk rock. Kathryn was a Teaching Assistant for the History of Rock at UT for several years, where she also directed the Brazilian Popular Music Ensemble. She is a trained flutist, has performed in bossa nova and Afro-pop groups in Austin, Texas and has played some bluegrass mandolin. Kathryn has guest lectured at The University of Texas at Austin, Southwestern University, the Universidad Particular de Iquitos in Peru, and Oberlin Conservatory of Music. She is an active member of the Society for Ethnomusicology and the International Association for the Study of Popular Music. She was also the Assistant Editor at the Latin American Music Review, a music journal that focuses on topics as diverse as hip-hop, salsa, cathedral music, and folk music, published by The University of Texas Press.
For Students
Hank Williams' White Wool Felt Cowboy Hat
Photo by Design Photography
Collection of Marty Stuart
