Arts and Sciences | Lion VoicesJune 25, 2025

Conducting the Rhythm of Teaching: Dr. Alex Zacharella

Written By: Ian Silvester

Dr. Alexandra Zacharella, Director of Bands, Professor of Music – Low Brass, and outgoing faculty senate chair at the University of Arkansas – Fort Smith, will tell you music is in her DNA. 

Affectionately known by students and colleagues as Dr. Z, Zacharella has been a stable fixture in the UAFS music department since she arrived in 2007. The Bloomfield, New Jersey, native grew up surrounded by music, with Latin influence and the soulful sounds of Motown from her mom and rock and roll from her dad. 

She fondly recalled some of her earliest memories of sitting behind a drum kit or on a bench with her fingers flowing across the keys of a piano. But when the time came to pick her instrument, she was determined to play something “that was going to be cool.”  Naturally, it was the trombone, she said with a laugh. By 13, she knew she was going to be a trombonist.

After spending the weekends of her senior year of high school at the Manhattan School of Music Preparatory Division, Zacharella attended the Hart School of Music at the University of Hartford, where she earned a double degree in music education and performance. She has a master’s degree in trombone performance from the University of Michigan.

Zacharella spent the next few years in Michigan teaching at Interlochen, the high school arts camp, and as a middle school band director. Her musical journey continued at the University of Southern California, where she earned a Doctor of Musical Arts degree in trombone performance with doctoral minors in music education, jazz studies, and wind and orchestral conducting.

Her musical accomplishments, like playing with Yo-Yo Ma, make some wonder why Zacharella chose a career of teaching and conducting at UAFS. Her answer is simple. 

“I loved my band teachers,” she said. “They were such great teachers, and I gravitated toward them. I wanted to be like those kinds of teachers.”

She has fulfilled that dream with the students of UAFS for the last 18 years.

As director of bands, Zacharella has conducted ensembles, musicals, operas, and the athletic band.

“It’s just really exciting,” she said. “There’s never a dull moment.”

Zacharella finds the different areas of her job fun, but she finds joy in watching her students not just “play the notes and rhythms but really make music.”

“The best part of my job is picking different styles of music and performing it with our students, who perform at such an extraordinary level. The end goal is to have the audience go, ‘Wow, that’s awesome,’” she said. “I could do this 1,000 times over. I would pick this career again and again and again for that moment of audience joy, for that space between silence and clapping.”

Becoming involved in campus affairs afforded Zacharella the opportunity to represent her students and colleagues at the university level. 

After being part of the inaugural Lion Leadership class and spending many semesters working on the faculty awards committee, Zacharella finally took a chance to run for the faculty senate. To her surprise, she was elected as chair-elect.

When the faculty chair at the time assumed an administrative position, instead of serving a term as chair-elect before taking over as chair, Zacharella was suddenly thrust into the chair position.

“I felt like it was the old-fashioned hit the ground running [approach],” she laughed, describing what she went through to catch up to speed.

As she reflected on her term as chair, Zacharella said the highlights included working with more colleagues across the UAFS campus and serving as an example for her students to take part in leadership opportunities.

“Students see me lead by example and be willing to be part of something. They are curious about it. Our students are very interested in what’s happening around them,” she said.

She encourages students to bloom where they’re planted – an adage she learned from a colleague when she first arrived at UAFS and a motto she has lived by ever since.

Zacharella believes she is exactly where she needs to be to help others bloom, whether she is leading the summer band camp or working with new and returning students. 

“Students at UAFS are risk takers,” she said. “They have grit, and grit is what gets them to the space where they face fear and walk through it.”

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