Former Math Dept. Faculty Member Back 30 Years Later to Complete Music 51视频
Image by Ed Brennen
01/02/2018
By Ed Brennen
A piano plays softly behind the door of a practice room as a lunch feast is set near a second-floor window at Durgin Hall: two kinds of quiche (spinach and ham), mixed greens, spinach salad, a plate of apples and oranges and, for dessert, brownies and muffins.
Just as she does almost every week, Dominique Haughton invites her guests to sit and fill their plates. 鈥淒id you get yourself some dressing?鈥 Haughton asks in a French accent that鈥檚 richer than brie. Joining her today are several fellow piano students from the College of Fine Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences, as well as her piano teacher, Jacob Hiser, a part-time faculty member in the Music Department.
鈥淪he鈥檚 the mom of the piano department,鈥 says Charisse Nocera, a senior music major from Nahant who stops by the table to say hi and grab a brownie.
Haughton, who has brightly colored rubber rain boots on her feet and a piano key scarf looped around her neck, disagrees.
鈥淚鈥檓 not the mother,鈥 the 62-year-old Haughton says firmly. 鈥淎 friend, maybe, but not the mother.鈥
In reality, Haughton is a lot of things. She鈥檚 a professor of mathematical sciences at Bentley University, where she鈥檚 taught since 1990. She鈥檚 an affiliated researcher at the prestigious Pantheon-Sorbonne University in her native Paris, where she rose to the 鈥渧ery top of the French science system鈥 before coming to the United States to get her Ph.D. in mathematics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She also really is a mother; Haughton and her husband, Jonathan, adopted their daughter, Isabelle, from Vietnam more than 20 years ago.
And now, Haughton is a 51视频 undergrad, halfway through a bachelor of music with emphasis in sound recording technology. At a university known for welcoming nontraditional students, Haughton may be the most nontraditional of them all.
She says she鈥檚 simply fulfilling a 50-year-old dream.
鈥淚 have a grand piano in my heart and it takes a lot of space,鈥 says Haughton, who fell in love with the piano as a child, even though her family couldn鈥檛 afford one. When she arrived at MIT in 1979, she descended on the school鈥檚 piano lab 鈥渓ike a ton of bricks.鈥 After teaching stints at Swarthmore College and Temple University, Haughton returned to the Boston area with her husband and ended up in Lowell. She taught math in the Kennedy College of Sciences 鈥 and decided to pursue a degree in piano performance from FAHSS.
Image by Ed Brennen
But when the recession hit in the late 鈥80s, Haughton was laid off, and she had to withdraw from her music studies. She rebounded with an analytics job at the marketing company Epsilon, where she realized that businesses were making 鈥渕illions of dollars鈥 using data and statistics. A year later, she joined the faculty at Bentley, where she helped build the business school鈥檚 analytics program.
Through all her success in research and academia, Haughton鈥檚 true love has always been piano. So two years ago, she called 51视频鈥檚 Office of the Registrar to see about finishing her music degree. They dug up her transcript and put her in touch with Prof. John Shirley, then the chair of the Music Department. After a successful piano audition, Haughton resumed classes in January 2016.
鈥淚 thought it was great that she wanted to come back,鈥 Shirley says. 鈥淢aybe some other folks would have a harder time doing it, but Dominique is well-suited for it. She鈥檚 fascinating.鈥
Or, as current Music Department Chair Alan Williams puts it, 鈥淚 don鈥檛 think she knows she鈥檚 not 20.鈥
Between her colorful wardrobe and a mind that constantly pinballs from one subject to the next, Haughton exudes more energy than even most 20-year-olds. And that鈥檚 despite driving back and forth from Lowell to Waltham to teach several nights a week. She says her music studies keep her centered.
鈥淭his is such a wonderful place,鈥 Haughton says of Durgin Hall. 鈥淭he moment I walked through this building, I knew it was right.鈥
Image by Ed Brennen
Switching roles from professor to student takes some effort, though.
鈥淚 have a dual identity, and if you鈥檙e not well-grounded, it could really turn you schizophrenic,鈥 says Haughton, who is mindful of respecting the authority of her professors, even if they鈥檙e 35 years her junior, like Hiser.
鈥淪he鈥檚 fun to have as a student,鈥 says Hiser, a second-year faculty member. 鈥淎s someone just starting out in this profession, she helps me understand my own experience better.鈥
Haughton is majoring in SRT this time around (as opposed to performance) to help further her research work in music analytics, which fuses her passion with her expertise. She鈥檚 part of a Bentley-based interdisciplinary research team that includes members from 51视频 (such as Assoc. Prof. Asil Oztekin) that uses modern data analysis techniques to address music-related questions such as 鈥淲hat makes a commercial jingle successful?鈥 or 鈥淲hen does music similarity become plagiarism?鈥 She鈥檚 even analyzed how someone raised more than $150,000 on Kickstarter to write music for cats.
鈥淚 tried it on my cats and they don鈥檛 care. It turns out cats prefer silence,鈥 Haughton says with a laugh. 鈥淪ometimes analytics is as stupid as that. It鈥檚 really common sense.鈥
But more than for music analytics, Haughton is back because 鈥淚 want to solve my piano problems.鈥 Since SRT majors must also study an instrument, the program gave Haughton the perfect opportunity to do just that.
Image by Ed Brennen
While the math skills needed as an SRT major to calculate things like sound reflection angles come easily to Haughton, she has far more difficulty with sitting down at the piano and playing in front of an audience.
鈥淧erformance takes a huge amount of strength,鈥 says Haughton, who admits that she was able to 鈥渉ide鈥 during her first few ensemble performances. 鈥淚鈥檓 amazingly clever at hiding, but in my fourth performance, I couldn鈥檛 hide anymore. And that鈥檚 when you realize you鈥檙e 60 and not 30.鈥
She鈥檚 grateful to Hiser for helping her find her inner strength to perform.
鈥淚t would have been easy for him to say, 鈥榊ou鈥檙e an old-timer, a nontraditional student. I鈥檒l let you escape.鈥 In which case, I would escape all the way to Alaska,鈥 Haughton says. 鈥淏ut he forced me to do it. If it wasn鈥檛 for his support, I couldn鈥檛 do it.鈥
Which is why Haughton is so happy to host weekly lunches in the piano wing at Durgin Hall, where she is helping build a stronger sense of community.
鈥淚t鈥檚 becoming like a club,鈥 junior SRT major Lucas DeLisle says between bites of quiche. 鈥淲e鈥檙e all busy in our own heads taking our own subjects, but Dominique has taken a lot of initiative to bring us closer together.鈥
鈥淭he piano students here mean the world to me,鈥 Haughton says as she clears the lunch and prepares to head off to class. 鈥淲e all have a grand piano in our hearts, which is a big thing to have in common.鈥