Glenn Gass' courses on the history of rock 'n roll, which were the first of such classes to be offered in any music school or conservatory, have garnered significant recognition for the IU School of Music and have established his national reputation as a teacher and scholar.

A number of his courses consistently generate full enrollment supplemented by long waiting lists of hopeful students. In addition to the history of rock 'n roll, he teaches a survey course on the history of Western classical music and takes a group of students "on site" to London for a course on the Beatles. In student evaluations, he garners chart breaking approval ratings.

Although Gass understands the assumption that his rock history classes are popular because of the subject matter, he has come to resent the implication that good teaching is less of an issue when students are already inclined to like the subject matter. On the contrary, he feels that the students' ownership of the material heightens their expectations. A widely acknowledged master in using technology to bring music, history and culture to life for his students, Gass has archived more than 1,000 video clips and 5,000 audio recordings of musicians both performing and talking about their music.

An observer of one of his class sessions remembers being particularly struck by the skillful manner in which Gass juxtaposed video clips of Jerry Lee Lewis singing Great Balls of Fire and Lewis' cousin Jimmy Swaggart speaking in tongues to illustrate the relationship between certain forms of evangelical Protestantism and early rock 'n roll.

Gass is also a composer whose work has been performed internationally, and he is the author of the Random House textbook, A History of Rock Music, a book he once described as "a text that takes the music seriously, not a glossy type of thing about rock stars."