For more than 35 years, the Eastern Mennonite High School Touring Choir has provided concerts for choral enthusiasts throughout the United States, Canada, and Europe. The present study documents the development, establishment, and growth of Touring Choir from its inception, through June of 1981: identifying (1) the events leading to the development of Touring Choir; (2) the philosophy and purpose of Touring Choir; (3) the directors of Touring Choir and their musical and professional backgrounds; (4) the contributions of each of the directors; and (5) the origin and development of the Senior Parent Weekend Concert, Tour Concert, Mennonite High School Music Festival, and Commencement Concert traditions. The study reports that the history of the Eastern Mennonite High School Touring Choir can be traced to the expressed desire of the school's founders in 1917 that vocal music be an integral part in the education of its students in order to enhance worship and singing in constituent churches. As touring choirs developed, the unique organization of Eastern Mennonite College and High School provided a basis for emulation by the high school when it became a separate organization during the 1960s, culminating in the establishing of Touring Choir in association with the Mennonite High School Music Festival. Marvin Miller's leadership as Touring Choir director established the Senior Parent Weekend Concert, Tour Concert, Mennonite High School Music Festival, and Commencement Concert traditions which became the foundation of Touring Choir's activities during the 1960s and early 1980s. Implications of the study consider the importance of modeling for music education practitioners. The growth of the Eastern Mennonite High School music department and the success of the Eastern Mennonite High School Touring Choir during the combined tenures of Annetta Wenger Miller and Marvin L. Miller were characterized by an enthusiasm for the subject matter of music, high expectations and motivation of students by challenging them to sing music of enduring value in a variety of styles by master composers, placing responsibility for learning on students, a positive approach in teaching, care and concern for students as individuals, and an emphasis on the expressive aspect of music study. In addition, the results of the music program under Marvin Miller's direction may have been due in part to his overall philosophy of music curriculum design that each student would understand the place of music in his or her life experience. / Master of Arts

This thesis is the report of an experiment carried on under the direction of Harry Huffman, Professor of Business Education at Virginia Polytechnic Institute, using material in Programmed Business Mathematics which was written by Dr. Huffman especially for post high school students and college freshmen. The programmed material used in the experiment consisted of the first 239 frames covering the basic fundamentals of addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. The main emphasis of the program is on building speed and accuracy in applying the skills and concepts related to these basic processes. The subjects of the experiment were eleven high school students from grades 9, 10, and 12, at Eastern Mennonite High School. The purpose of the experiment was to obtain these data: 1. What kind of errors do high school students make on the program? 2. What changes need to be made in the program to adapt it for use on the high school level? 3. Can the program be adjusted so that high school students can work through it with five percent or less of errors? The writer found that errors were grouped under these major headings and in this order: Lack of comprehension of concepts introduced, carelessness, and computational (errors of addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division). The frames were revised three times during the experiment. Revision consisted of adding prompts of underlining or new words, rewriting frames, or constructing new frames. Two students went through the original frames: average errors, 6.56 percent. Three students worked with the first revision: average errors, 11.58 percent. Four students worked with the second revision: average errors, 3.13 percent. Two students worked with the third revision: average errors, 2.56. Although the error rate did not drop consistently, it did drop from a high of 11.58 percent on the second round of testing to 2.56 percent for the final round, a decrease of 9.02 in percent. Individual differences in I.Q., previous training, and the manner in which the student-editors worked undoubtedly account for part of the variation in error percentages. The results of the experiment show that it is possible for high school students to work on the fundamentals of business mathematics frames with an error limit of five percent or less. / Master of Science