Dear College of Fine Arts Colleagues,

By now, you have seen this week’s announcement of UT Austin’s 10-year Strategic Plan and our new campus-wide DEI Strategic Direction. The new strategic plan outlines initiative areas across five strategic pillars that already make us a high-impact university — People, Place and Pursuits of Education, Experience and Research. I spent some time with the document this week, and I’m excited to see such strong alignment between the university’s goals and our own priorities, needs and opportunities in the College of Fine Arts. I’m excited to dig into our college’s own strategic planning.

This fall, I’ll be visiting departments and extending my listening tour as we work to identify the needs of our college and chart its future. I look forward to these conversations and your input on how these exciting frameworks of the university’s capital campaign might align with our aspirations as a college and with our individual disciplines.

Many initiatives are already under way that align beautifully with the goals outlined in the 10-Year Strategic Plan and DEI Strategic Direction. We already count among our ranks and are actively courting outstanding new faculty members who are working at the top of their fields. We are also pursuing interdisciplinary artists and scholars who diversify their respective fields through our Expanding Approaches to American Art cluster hiring initiative.

We continue to advance great impact through the arts, including preparing a talented cohort of dynamic arts teachers in K-12. We’re advancing new work, knowledge and innovation in every discipline, and we are reaching increasingly distinguished platforms for work that originates here on the Forty Acres and has a major impact well beyond our campus and state. Our faculty, students, and staff continue to impress and inspire me on a daily basis.

I see so many areas of excellence and opportunity in our college, and I am eager to continue to build on this momentum as we collectively imagine a new vision for the next ten years of our college.

Sincerely,