Frank Bongiorno is Professor Emeritus of Saxophone and Jazz Studies at the University of North Carolina Wilmington where he taught since 1982 before retiring in June of 2022. During his time at UNCW, his saxophone as well as jazz students received national and international recognition by such organizations as Down Beat and Jazzfest USA, among others, and he was recognized for his contributions to teaching at UNCW receiving the 2006 J. Marshall Crews Distinguished Faculty Award, the UNCW 2010 Distinguished Teaching Professorship Award, and the 2011 North Carolina Board of Governors Award for Excellence in Teaching.

Teaching and learning are reciprocating processes between teacher and student, where ideas, concepts, and information flows regularly from one to another. As a guide and information facilitator, the teacher begins by sharing information to initiate the learning process, and to ultimately pave various alternative paths for the learner to consider, without influencing and/or directing the student towards any given path or direction, but rather, allowing the student to deduce and determine a pathway based upon flow of information and the internalization of the concepts identified and discussed.

While the teaching philosophy and methodology outlined above incorporates some of the teaching approaches I have used with my students, I believe teaching and learning are processes that evolve over time and adapt to any given situation at any given time. In addition, a music professor draws upon one’s own experience of the skills to be modeled, as well as upon life experiences similar to and/or equivalent to the skill to be learned by the student.