Bruce Musgrave

Bruce Musgrave serves as Assistant Head of School for Academics at Palmer Trinity School in Palmetto Bay, Florida, where he also teaches a course in Advanced Placement English Language and Composition. During his forty-year career in education he has taught English and mathematics, coached 60 athletic teams for boys and girls in seven sports, and provided educational leadership as a departmental chair, director of studies, curriculum coordinator, principal, and assistant head of school. He has held positions in the public schools of Brighton, New York and State College, Pennsylvania, and at independent schools in Kamuela, Hawaii; Hilton Head, South Carolina; Albuquerque, New Mexico; North Hollywood California; Joplin Missouri; and Palmetto Bay, Florida.

As a member of Frank Battisti’s IHS Marching and Concert Bands from 1962-65, Musgrave played the trombone and served as Drum Major and IHS Band President. He js a 1965 graduate of Ithaca High School, and he earned B.A. and M.A.T. degrees in English from Cornell University in 1970 and 1971 respectively. Born and raised in Ithaca, New York, he is the son of Robert and Mildred Musgrave. His three sisters, two of whom were also members of the Ithaca High School Band, are also career educators. His wife of forty years, Peggy Mercer Musgrave, also graduated from Ithaca High School, where she too was a member of the IHS Marching and Concert Bands.

Musgrave’s professional honors include recognition as the inaugural State Teacher of the Year for Upper Schools by the South Carolina Independent Schools Association in 1986. In 1988 he was awarded the initial F. X. Slevin prize for Distinguished Teaching by Albuquerque Academy, where he was later named as the first Robert N. Philips Teaching Chair. In 1990 he was commissioned as an essayist on English instruction for the New Standards Project and the Coalition of Essential Schools, and he is a former guest columnist for the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle’s “Concerning Children” feature. A Cum Laude Society member, over the years he has been awarded teaching prizes for instructional excellence by Williams College, the University of Chicago, and Southern Methodist University, all on the recommendation of former students of his who had enrolled in those institutions. His service to regional professional education organizations includes membership on ten accreditation teams. His athletic teams won six state championships in girls’ tennis, and two boys’ tennis state finalist trophies; his boys’ soccer teams finished as state runners-up twice, one of those teams was ranked seventh in the US for a season by USA Today, and he coached a district-champion girls’ soccer team in New York, where he also served twice as the Empire State Games Western Region Scholastic Women’s Soccer Coach. He has said often that all the professional distinctions he achieved throughout his career put together were not as great an honor as being a member of the IHS Band.