Dr. Joe Gennaro joined the UCF Music Program as a Visiting Instructor for the 2011-2012 academic year, and became a full-time member of the department as a Lecturer. He was promoted to Associate Lecturer in 2016 and to Senior Lecturer in 2023. His primary undergraduate teaching duties are in Music History, specifically GEP classes, and the core Music History sequence. At the Graduate level, he teaches Music Bibliography and Research, and two seminars in the Development of Opera and Film Score Studies. Prior to his appointment at UCF, Dr. Gennaro taught courses in Music Theory, Music History, Class Piano, and Applied Piano at Seminole State College.

Dr. Gennaro's principal piano instructors were Steinway Artists Brent Runnels at Rollins College (under whom Gennaro studied in high school), and Gary Wolf. The latter was his major professor as he completed a B.A. in Piano from UCF (1999). Gennaro then proceeded to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill where he completed his M.A. in Musicology with his thesis "Honest to God, Jesus Christ Superstar, and Religion in England in the 1960s" under the direction of rock scholar John Covach. He completed his doctoral dissertation at UNC entitled "The Genesis and Reception of Robert Schumann's Kerner Liederreihe, op. 35" under the direction of Schumann scholar Jon Finson.

Dr. Gennaro is an active member of the American Musicological Society and the regional chapter of AMS-South. His main scholarly work focuses on German Lieder (specifically, songs by Robert Schumann, Franz Schubert, and Johannes Brahms), rock music, the piano music of Ludwig van Beethoven, and the songs of Samuel Barber.