Bringing harmony to the social sciences
When the pandemic hit, conductor Ron Spigelman explored other avenues. He's graduating this fall with a bachelor's degree in family and human development major, alongside an ensemble of minors in counseling, applied psychology, sociology and communication. Photo courtesy of Ron Spigelman
Editor’s note: This story is part of a series of profiles of notable fall 2024 graduates.
For over 20 years, Ron Spigelman has been at home on the conductor’s podium, bringing music to life. As a professional conductor, he has worked with orchestras and ballet companies across North America, including the Atlanta and Vancouver symphonies. But when the pandemic abruptly silenced live performances, Spigelman found himself searching for a new way to connect with people.
Driven by a desire to make an impact, he chose the social sciences, and now he is the Fall 2024 Dean’s Medalist for Arizona State University’s T. Denny Sanford School of Social and Family Dynamics.
Spigelman’s passion for helping people was inspired by his family long before he got to ASU. Perhaps the biggest influence stemmed from his family’s legacy as Holocaust survivors — a story famously captured in “Maus: A Survivor's Tale” by Art Spiegelman, which won the Pulitzer Prize in 1992 (Ron's grandfather and Art's father were cousins, and Ron's grandfather appears in the book as an infant), and the recently published book “Blue Eyes Wide Open” by Rachel Spigelman, Ron’s mother, about his father's experiences. These family stories instilled in him a conviction for community service and helping the less fortunate.
When concerts slowed and the opportunity for education arose, Spigelman enrolled in ASU’s family and human development program. Having driven for Uber between conducting engagements, he was able to take advantage of a scholarship from the Uber and ASU Online partnership — an opportunity to pursue his goal of helping others in new ways.
“If I could no longer touch people’s lives with music — we didn’t know how long it would be till concerts resumed — then … I could jump into a new field to help people a different way,” he says. “I was not without apprehension at 53 years old, but with the encouragement from my family, I jumped in!”
For Spigelman, learning wasn’t about grades or accolades but about gaining as much insight into the human condition as possible. Just as he had once brought musicians together to create a unified sound, he now applied that same approach to his studies. His family and human development major, alongside an ensemble of minors in counseling, applied psychology, sociology and communication, gave him the tools and language to examine issues he’d cared about his whole life: equity, justice and empathy.
Now living in Jenks, Oklahoma, Spigelman is excited to channel his education into new avenues for community outreach. He hopes to build programs that support marginalized groups and improve community well-being.
His path — from the conductor’s podium to ASU’s virtual classroom — shows just how powerful lifelong learning is.
“When you’re learning, you’re in the moment. You have to be,” he says. “That’s how you turn back the clock.”
We caught up with Spigelman to hear more about his journey, the professors who impacted him most and his advice for other learners ready to make a difference.
Question: What’s something you learned while at ASU — in the classroom or otherwise — that surprised you or changed your perspective?
Answer: Firstly, doing the degree online was the biggest surprise (my first degree in music was completed in 1989 in London England at the Royal Academy of Music when there was no online!) in that I didn’t expect it to be so immersive, interactive and comprehensive; there was so much engagement from professors and peers so it was not an isolating experience but a collaborative one.
Q: Which professor taught you the most important lesson while at ASU?
A: I have to pick two in particular. Professor Joshua Kane (SOC 352, social change) said something very powerful that I will never forget: Instead of thinking that we change the world, it is the world that also changes us. It was a very important lesson to realize that we react to change as the first step in trying to effect change. Secondly, Professor Kari Visconti who did the unthinkable, made me fall in love with learning statistics because she told us simply, it is how we make sense of things. Who doesn’t want to do that! Seriously, take her stats class — she makes it like a good book you can’t put down!
Q: With your unique path, what do you hope your story might teach or inspire in others, especially other adult learners who may feel uncertain about returning to school?
A: People talk about trying to reverse age or age more slowly — people are always trying to turn back the clock — but how can we spend the time we have in the most valuable way? I think learning is the most powerful way to do that. The more you age, the more you have and the more you’re able to impact others in a positive way. … You can still do things as long as you are still generative. And if you’re taking care of the now, you’re also taking care of your future.
Q: What are your plans after graduation?
A: Right now, I am doing lots of concerts again ( I was in Arizona last May with the Tucson Symphony … I know — on the rival campus!) but I am weighing the options for which master's I want to do. Where I want to go with my studies is to create interactive programming to effect macro social policy in addressing marginalization. I have so many ideas!
Q: If someone gave you $40 million to solve one problem on our planet, what would you tackle?
A: Planetary problems would require much more than $40 million so I can’t use it for climate change! But to choose one problem would be to install a standard curriculum for multicultural communication skills starting in kindergarten. I believe that cultural competency is even more important to teach at an early age than social studies, so that children learn to communicate with each other no matter what ethnicity or culture they are from.
This way, from the beginning of their socialization, they gain the reflex of wanting to communicate and to actually experience the similarities in each other, rather than the differences, which is what is taught now in regard to the various cultures. In short, I want people to develop to be interactive and purpose-driven in their pursuit of knowledge, rather than be passive in their learning, so how to talk to others over how to think of others. I think $40 million would be a good start to create programming for this to begin.
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