Faculty

Candice D. Mattio (she/her) is Assistant Professor of Music Teaching and Learning at the USC Thornton School of Music, where she leads the Popular Music Teaching & Learning program, and teaches graduate courses in popular music education, creative thinking, music technology, composition and improvisation, and assessment and quantitative research in music teaching and learning. She is also the Vice President of the Association for Popular Music Education (APME). 

Mattio’s research focuses on intersections of creativity, music technology, and socio-political issues in contemporary and popular music education. Her research has been published in the Arts Education Policy Review, the Bulletin of the Council for Research in Music Education, the Journal of Popular Music Education, the International Journal of Music Education, and in Places and Purposes of Popular Music Education: Perspectives from the Field (Intellect) and The Modern Band Handbook (Oxford). 

She regularly presents her work on the national and international stages, and also serves as a program consultant and active clinician around the country. She co-led the Florida Music Education Association’s inaugural All-State Popular Music Collective, which was the first popular music all-state endeavor in the United States, and was invited as the popular music clinician for the California Music Educators Association’s inaugural Multi-Music Festival in 2025. Mattio has also fostered collaborations with organizations such as Music Will, Save the Music, Splice, Moises, Focusrite, MusicFirst, and others to provide equitable access to popular music education, and has been awarded fellowships from the College Music Society (CMS), the National Association of Music Merchants (NAMM) Foundation, Music Will, and Radical Partners.

Mattio received degrees in music education from the University of Miami (Ph.D.), Northwestern University (M.M.), and the University of South Alabama (B.M.). Before joining the Thornton faculty, she served as assistant professor and coordinator of music education at Florida International University, and was previously chair of fine arts in Chicago Public Schools, where she taught secondary general music, electronic music, live sound, recording and studio production, and popular music ensembles.