Dear Friends,
The fall semester is off to a fantastic start in the College of Fine Arts, and our stages, studios and practice rooms are hubs of activity. Behind the scenes, we’ve been working on two important initiatives that will better prepare our students for career pathways, while engaging deeply with our own arts communities here in Austin.
Arts Communities
John Yancey, our associate dean of diversity, equity and inclusion, retired in August after an incredible tenure leading our college’s DEI efforts. We want to build upon and expand that good work as we reimagine this portfolio to focus on high visibility and high impact engagement initiatives with community partners to foster a culture of collaboration between our college and our immensely diverse local arts scene. We have renamed the Office of Diversity into the Office for Diversity, Community Engagement and Public Practice to reflect this change and will be working in the next months to appoint a new associate dean and a full-time program coordinator to oversee this exciting work.
I also recently appointed Dr. Charles Carson, associate professor at the Butler School of Music, as faculty chair of the Fine Arts Diversity Council (FADC). The FADC will continue to advise my office and our constituent departments on the best ways to develop an inclusive arts and design community for all and will continue to award grants for student and faculty projects that advance our goals to expand our knowledge of and investments in the broadest range of artistic and design practices—from ancient to contemporary, institutional to community-based.
Arts Economies
The college’s Center for Creative Entrepreneurship has been a key platform for supporting students with entrepreneurial interests. We want to build on this good work by expanding this portfolio and rebranding it as the Center for Creative Economies. We plan to broaden the focus to include more substantial curricular and co-curricular initiatives to ensure our students have a better awareness of the economies that shape their lives as art makers, scholars, art educators and advocates.
We want our students not only to develop their craft and scholarly skills, but to have the confidence to build a career in their field, along with the capacity to translate their skills to numerous industries and opportunities in the arts and creative economies. Alongside their discipline-specific training, students will learn about legal issues, economic management and philanthropic and entrepreneurial skills needed to advance an arts career. A search for a new Center for Creative Economies director and a full-time coordinator will launch this fall.
Moving Forward
With generous support from the Provost’s Office, we will be working in the next months to advance these exciting projects. Furthermore, we believe the arts to be one of the front porches to The University of Texas at Austin, and we want to ensure that our organization is properly structured and staffed to engage our community as we make campus a vibrant place for dialogue, vision and action and to prepare our students for sustainable careers.
Sincerely,
