Music Education graduate Chenxin Han ’26E (MA), winner of the 2025 Presser Graduate Award, has unveiled her project, Chinese Children’s Songs: An Open-Web Resource. The Presser Foundation’s Graduate Music Award is a prestigious honor that supports exceptional graduate music students with the potential to make distinguished contributions to the field. As an award recipient, Han received a grant to develop her project, which she presented to the Eastman community in April 2026. The online resource features notation, audio recordings, background information, and teaching resources for songs representing China’s diverse regional cultures and musical traditions.
The project was inspired by an assignment in Associate Professor of Music Teaching and Learning Mara Culp’s early music education methods course in fall 2024. Han discovered that many Western resources featuring Chinese children’s songs either lacked
important cultural context or included songs that were not authentically Chinese. Conversations with her Chinese friends and family reinforced that gap and inspired her to create a resource that authentically represents Chinese musical traditions while making them more accessible to music educators.
Having recently graduated from Eastman, Han plans to return to China, where she hopes to pursue work in choral music, conducting, and secondary chorus instruction. Passionate about sharing her culture with others, she also plans to continue expanding the online resource by adding new repertoire as time allows. Congratulations to Chenxin Han ’26E (MA) on this well-deserved recognition.
Visit here to learn more about Chenxin and explore her evolving project website, where new resources will continue to be added.