Kimberly Meier-Sims joined the faculty of the Cleveland Institute of Music in 2004, where she is a Violin Faculty member and Director of the Sato Center for Suzuki Studies. A registered Violin Teacher Trainer through the Suzuki
Kimberly Meier-Sims joined the faculty of the Cleveland Institute of Music in 2004, where she is a Violin Faculty member and Head of Suzuki Studies. A registered Violin Teacher Trainer through the Suzuki Association of the Americas, she conducts a two-year graduate Suzuki teacher-training program at CIM, which is part of a unique Master of Music dual degree in Violin or Viola Performance and Suzuki Pedagogy. Over the past thirty-five years Ms. Meier-Sims has worked with young students and teachers, promoting the Suzuki Method of teaching at Suzuki summer institutes and workshops throughout the U.S. and internationally in England and Ireland. In 2015 she received the CIM Excellence in Teaching Award, and in 2001 she received the Tennessee Governor's School Outstanding Teacher Award. In 2002 she was the violin coordinator for the Suzuki Association of the Americas National Conference in Minneapolis. She has published articles in the American Suzuki Journal, Strings Magazine and the Tennessee Musician.
Ms. Meier-Sims studied violin and Suzuki pedagogy with John Kendall, Almita Vamos, Dr. Shinichi Suzuki and Doris Preucil. In 1988, she became one of the youngest Suzuki Teacher Trainers in the U.S.
Ms. Meier-Sims’ CIM Conservatory Suzuki Pedagogy graduates have received full-time positions at the University of Wisconsin Stevens Point, the University of Arkansas, and the Dallas Suzuki Institute. Another of her graduates served on the SAA board of directors. Her private violin students have been members of the Cleveland Orchestra Youth Orchestra, the Cleveland Contemporary Youth Orchestra, performed and held the role of concert master in the Suzuki Youth Orchestra of the Americas and SAA Conference master classes with Paul Kantor & Scott Conklin, as well as the SAA Conference Advanced violin group performance with Nicholas Kendall.