Corky directs teacher training clinics and workshops at conferences across the United States, including the annual summer workshop of CMP (Comprehensive Musicianship through Performance), a teacher training program in Wisconsin. She has served as the chair of American String Teacher Associations Committee on Studio Instruction, and the private teacher representative on the board of TexASTA. She co-teaches a graduate pedagogy class at the Shepherd School and has begun collaborating with Laurie Scott at the University of Texas on a string pedagogy textbook.
Cornelia Watkins received a Bachelor of Music degree from Hartt School of Music, where she studied with David Wells. She spent many summers studying chamber music at the Yellow Barn Music Festival in Putney, VT, and subsequently moved to Vermont to teach at the Brattleboro Music Center, and performing with the Wantastiquet Chamber Players and Blanche Honegger Moyse's Bach Festival Orchestra.
In 1982 Corky moved to Houston TX as a fellowship recipient to receive her Masters of Music degree from the University of Houston under the tutelage of Hans JΓΈrgen Jensen. She has since stayed in Houston as an active professional musician and teaching in the Shepherd School of Music Preparatory Program at Rice University. Her students regularly play in Texas All-Region and All-State Orchestras, and many of them have gone on to become school orchestra directors, professional performers, and music school professors.