Mark Sullivan
Associate Professor of Composition
Mark Sullivan is a composer and associate professor in the Michigan State University College of Music. His compositions have been performed widely. Over three decades at MSU, he has taught music composition, computer music, and aesthetic theory, and he has written on the relationship between music, movement, and language. He developed and taught courses on the pedagogy of composition, and helped develop two major initiatives on creativity, innovation and entrepreneurship.
During this time, he also created integrated media arts programs for youth, most recently, as a part of a faculty team that helped create a new program centered on developing literacy through songwriting and media composition.
As of 2016, he will split his efforts between the College of Music, and the Innovation Hub for Teaching and Learning, working on several projects, including one that integrates art and media composition into STEM education, and another that focuses on cultivating digital media literacy across the curriculum.
He received a doctor of musical arts from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Sullivan composes for acoustic instruments, with and without the computer, and for both instruments and computer-generated sounds. He specializes in the analysis and performance of contemporary music and in studies that relate music to the other arts and society.