Martha Hilley joined the faculty of The University of Texas School of Music in 1982 as coordinator of group piano and a member of the piano pedagogy faculty. Over the next 36 years she served two years as head of the keyboard division, five years as Associate Director of the School of Music as well as two different five-year terms as Director of Undergraduate Studies. Martha retired from the Butler School of Music on August 31, 2019.

Over the last 49 years in higher education, Ms. Hilley has been an active participant in workshops, conferences and seminars on the international, national, state and local levels. She has been co-curriculum coordinator with Lynn Freeman Olson and presenter for the International Pedagogy Workshops in Italy, Belgium, Norway, Australia, Austria and Hawaii and served as pedagogy faculty for the Fairbanks Summer Arts Festival in Alaska and Tunghai University's Summer Keyboard Institute in Taichung, Taiwan. She was keynote speaker and presenter for the 2013 Encontro Internacional de Piano ed Grupo in Goiania, Brazil. In 2014, Hilley was fortunate enough to be an attendee at the Polofonia Conference held at the Royal Conservatory of the Hague ("The Musician as Creative Entrepreneur"). In more recent years Martha has been a co-presenter at CEPROM, a pre-conference meeting to ISME and a co-presenter at the ISME Conference in Glasgow, Scotland. She was also a keynote speaker at the 2018 SEMPRE Conference in London, England. Workshops, presentations and masterclasses have continued on the national level after her retirement.

Professor Hilley's abilities as a teacher have been recognized on numerous occasions: 1983, Texas Excellence Teaching Award; 1988 one of four university-wide Dad's Association Centennial Fellowships; 1992, Orpheus Award presented by Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia; 1997, Outstanding Collegiate Teacher Award by the Texas Music Teachers Association; and in1998, William David Blunk Professorship in recognition of outstanding undergraduate teaching and research. In 2000, she was chosen for membership in Leadership Texas and was elected the following September to the Leadership Texas Alumni Board of Directors. Other honors include induction into the Academy of Distinguished Teachers (UT Austin) 2005; Distinguished Service Award from the Music Teachers National Association spring 2008; University of Texas at Austin, Civitatis Award 2011-2012; MTNA Teacher of the Year 2014; and Lifetime Achievement Award, presented at the 2017 National Conference on Keyboard Pedagogy. She served as MTNA President-Elect 2017-2019, 2019-2021 President and 2021-2023 Immediate Past President. In January of 2023, Hilley opened her first studio in her home. The studio is for group piano lessons of beginning adults age 60 and above. This "first" in her life has been a dream for the last 25 years.

Articles by Professor Hilley have been published in Clavier, Piano Quarterly and Keyboard Companion and within anthologies published by Routledge Press (UK). She is co-author of two college piano texts: "Piano for the Developing Musician " and "Piano for Pleasure." The texts were the first to embrace digital sequencer technology through disks furnished to teachers as well as the first to provide web-based computer tutorials, downloadable pdf and mp3 files and dedicated web sites for each text.