Teresa Tippens OC ‘15

Gadjah Mada University, Indonesia (2015-17)

Teresa Tippens graduated in May 2015 with a major in Musical Studies and a minor in Computer Science. Teresa comes from a long line of Obies. Her great grandfather was a minister and professor at the Oberlin Seminary, and her grandmother and her mother were students at the College. Teresa has been studying music since the age of five when she began to learn the violin, and she has a concentration in Sound Design. During 2011-2012, she was the concertmaster for the Oberlin College Community Orchestra, and traveled to Austria and the Czech Republic for performances with her youth orchestra in middle school. In high school, Teresa spent a year in Japan on a Rotary Club scholarship, and returned there with a Shansi In-Asia grant for her 2013 winter term to investigate sound and ethnomusicology in Japan. While there, she created what she calls “sonic photographs” of Japan. Through these experiences that began as early as high school, Teresa had her sights on a Shansi Fellowship as her next step after college. As her interests expanded into the fields of food – she was a proud OSCA “tasty things maker” and baking Exco teacher – along with computer programming, and an eye-opening 2014 winter term trip with Professor Jennifer Fraser exploring Music, Islam and Disaster in Indonesia, she has found the Shansi Fellowship opportunity to be an even better fit than before! Teresa looks forward to delving into Jogja’s vibrant foods and flavors, sharing her own baking skills, and examining what she calls “sonic stereotypes” which are conventional uses of music to characterize certain cultures or places in the media and videogames, which are often offensive or inaccurate. She hopes to explore the cultural implications of these soundtracks and draw further attention to messages they project. Follow her adventures on her blog, Teresa the Traveller!