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Announcements

Based on feedback from ARHU Associate Professors and in partnership with the ARHU ADVANCE Professor, ARHU Faculty Affairs invites you to a workshop series just for you... 

Reducing the Barriers to Promotion: A Series of Mini Workshops for ARHU Associate Professors will hone in on specific barriers that associate professors in the college have faced and share information to overcome them.

Please join us virtually each month to receive dossier guidance, writing tips, and myth-busting information to help you navigate your way towards submitting a full professor dossier. Each session is brief to respect your time but packed with helpful information.

If you do not believe you are ready to go up for full, this series is for you! 

Each workshop has its own registration link, please see below. We especially encourage women and people of color to register.  

The Dossier and Timeline for Promotion: Separating Myth from Fact
Thursday, November 18, 2021, 9:00am-10:30am
REGISTER HERE

The "Docs are In”: One-on-one sessions with ARHU ADVANCE Professor or Associate Dean for Faculty Affairs
Get your individual questions and promotion concerns discussed confidentially.
December, 2021--By appointment, email ADVANCE Professor at jenoch1@umd.edu, or Associate Dean for Faculty Affairs at laldoory@umd.edu

Yes, You are Making an “Impact"! How to Document Impact in your Dossier
Wednesday, February 9, 2022, 11:30am-1:00pm
REGISTER HERE

Harnessing the Value of Service and Administration for Promotion
Monday, March 14, 2022, 10:00am-11:30am
REGISTER HERE

Writing Your Personal Statement: Becoming Fabulous in Five Pages or Less
Friday, April 1, 2022, 2:00pm-3:30pm |
REGISTER HERE

 

10/29/21

Jazz manouche—a genre known best for its energetic, guitar-centric swing tunes—is among France’s most celebrated musical practices of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. It centers on the recorded work of famed guitarist Django Reinhardt and is named for the ethnoracial subgroup of Romanies (also known, often pejoratively, as “Gypsies”) to which Reinhardt belonged. French Manouches are publicly lauded as bearers of this jazz tradition, and many take pleasure and pride in the practice while at the same time facing pervasive discrimination. Jazz manouche uncovers a contradiction at the heart of France’s assimilationist republican ideals: the music is portrayed as quintessentially French even as Manouches themselves endure treatment as racial others.

In this book, Siv B. Lie explores how this music is used to construct divergent ethnoracial and national identities in a context where discussions of race are otherwise censured. Weaving together ethnographic and historical analysis, Lie shows that jazz manouche becomes a source of profound ambivalence as it generates ethnoracial difference and socioeconomic exclusion. As the first full-length ethnographic study of French jazz to be published in English, this book enriches anthropological, ethnomusicological, and historical scholarship on global jazz, race and ethnicity, and citizenship while showing how music can be an important but insufficient tool in struggles for racial and economic justice.

 

See the Django Generations companion website.

10/18/21

By Jessica Weiss ’05

In late 2009, violinist Vijay Gupta got a call from L.A. Times journalist Steve Lopez. Gupta, then 21, had two years earlier become the youngest ever member of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, one of the world’s preeminent orchestras. Now a friend of Lopez’s named Nathaniel Ayers wanted a lesson. 

Ayers, a talented musician in his own right, had been diagnosed with a severe mental illness and ended up homeless on the streets of Los Angeles. He was the subject of Lopez's bestselling book “The Soloist” as well as a subsequent movie starring Robert Downey Jr. as Lopez and Jamie Foxx as Ayers. 

Gupta had never taught before, but he didn’t hesitate. He began visiting Ayers in Skid Row, the largest community of unhoused people in the United States, where the two Juilliard-trained musicians bonded over Beethoven, scales and technique.

Gupta also wondered how many others in Los Angeles’ homeless population were like Ayers—brilliant and talented but disenfranchised due to mental illness, addiction or simple bad luck. Gupta didn’t know how, but he knew he wanted to offer music to Skid Row.

A year later, Gupta founded Street Symphony, a nonprofit that brings music to homeless and incarcerated communities in Los Angeles through workshops, events and educational opportunities. He is also a co-founder of the Skid Row Arts Alliance, a consortium of arts organizations made up of people living and working in Skid Row. For his work “bringing beauty, respite and purpose to those all too often ignored by society,” Gupta was the recipient of a 2018 MacArthur Fellowship. 

Ten years since its founding, Street Symphony’s roster of artists—made up of professionals and community musicians—now numbers 90. They’ve presented some 1,200 events, reaching well over 10,000 people. Gupta, who left The Los Angeles Philharmonic in 2018 to devote himself to Street Symphony, seeks to share widely his message that art is an offering of love, justice and connection that has the power to heal entire communities. To date, his TED Talk, “Music is Medicine, Music is Sanity,” has garnered millions of views. 

Under the banner of Arts for All, a campuswide initiative leveraging the combined power of the arts, technology and social justice to address the grand challenges of our time, Gupta will speak Thursday at The Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center as part of the 2021–22 Arts and Humanities Dean’s Lecture Series. But before that, he talked to us about his journey to activism, learning from those he serves and the responsibility of the artist to work for justice. 

You’ve performed as an international recitalist, soloist, chamber musician and orchestral musician for over 20 years. But you also studied biology in college, and are now a nonprofit leader. How do you manage being so multidisciplinary? 

I feel like my role as an artist, as a citizen, as a nonprofit leader, as a spouse, all comes back to finding the truth. And the iterative process of applying oneself to a question to find the truth, and trying something and failing at that something, is both scientific and artistic and a deeply spiritual pursuit. I would love for us to throw away externally imposed certificates of expertise and rather think about multidisciplinary connections of gifts, because that places us into the framework of curiosity. Whether it’s an artistic pursuit, a scientific pursuit, a relationship, an act of civic engagement—I think we always need to stay curious. 

You started Street Symphony at the age of 22 while a musician in the Los Angeles Philharmonic. How did you do that? 

After I met Nathaniel I knew there was a possibility there could be other people like him out there, but I didn’t know how to reach them. So, I just started cold calling people. And there was a lot of failure. I called hospice workers who thought I was a prank caller. I called a lot of people who didn’t take me seriously. Eventually I started calling social workers working for Skid Row and they said “Yes, we’ll set aside our lunch hour and get an audience together and have a concert.” And my colleagues in the Philharmonic really rose to the occasion and they went with me. I didn’t start Street Symphony alone, I was never alone in this work. I had colleagues who gave their hearts, talents and gifts continuously with very little expectation of anything in return. And there was never an idea to create a nonprofit. Somebody handed me a check at a TED conference. I didn’t know what to do with the money so that’s when I thought to start a nonprofit at least to have the money in a bank account. 

How would you recommend people begin to make a difference in their own communities?  

The first thing you need to do is to take inventory of your gifts—what feels good and what you love. Basically, what makes you come alive? The second step is to find a way to apply that in the world—any way. If you like it when someone laughs, then make a daily practice of making somebody laugh. Find a way to give and receive what makes you come alive. Third, create a lab. Find your peers, find your tribe, who are willing to ask questions and apply them in the world in a similar way. Fourth, offer it to the world. Show up with curiosity and not with judgement, and serve. When we take these four steps, we’re identifying our values. If you start with your values—your why—the how and the what will come next. 

What do you feel like you and your fellow professional musicians have learned through this decade-long interchange of ideas? 

That there is more that is similar about us than is different. The conversation around service and engagement and outreach often has this pernicious myth around the redemption story, that we can save people. And I feel like that’s a perfectly fine place to start but it becomes hubristic if that’s our only motivation, because it maintains a separation of us and them. Even if we’re showing up out of charity it could still be in the mode of judgment and not in the mode of curiosity. It could still be in the mode of expertise and not experience. So, I feel like I have thrown every bit of dogma or rule or some judgments I’ve had about “those people” out. I’ve also learned from my colleagues in Skid Row that we don’t have to let the worst thing that’s happened to us define us. Forgiveness is choosing to take our identity from something more than the wound. We really do get to choose our lives. We really do get to choose our perception and the way we go about paying attention to the world. 

Do you believe artists have a unique responsibility to engage in social justice work? 

I see justice as an artistic practice. There is no end to justice. The same way there is no end to reconciliation and there is no end to love and there is no end to learning. These are all practices. And the truth is, what artists know more than anything is how to practice. We already have what we need to change the world. So, yes. I think we actually have an obligation to be engaged—to heal and inspire through our artistry but also to provoke change.

Gupta will be at The Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center October 21, 2021 from 5:30-7 p.m. Reserve tickets here. He will also sell and sign copies of his recent album “When the Violin” in the lobby after the event. This event is co-sponsored by the School of Music.

9/30/21

By Christine Zhu

The University of Maryland is debuting an immersive media design major this semester, the first undergraduate program in the country that synthesizes art with computer science.

There are two tracks available in the program: an art track leading to a bachelor’s of arts degree from the college of arts and humanities, and a computer science track leading to a bachelor’s of science degree from the college of computer, mathematical and natural sciences.

The program works with creating virtual and augmented realities, offering a wide variety of courses for whichever track a student wants to take. 

One of the classes, Introduction to Immersive Media, covers history and research in the field. Its projects involve sensors, augmented reality and virtual reality.

Another class, Introduction to Computational Media, teaches students about the computing that’s required for each type of media. For example, imagery deals with computer graphics and sound deals with synthetic audio.

“We’re investigating ways to use modern technology and media to take the place of information that you would perceive with your senses in a natural environment,” said Stevens Miller, an adjunct lecturer in the department of computer science. 

As a result, students can create artificial environments where they control interactions with the senses — sight, sound and even touch and smell in some cases.

Studio arts lecturer Mollye Bendell used the Artechouse, an art center in Washington, D.C., as an example of a virtual reality experience that uses immersive media design. 

“[It’s] a gallery that specializes in the intersection of art and technology,” she said. “[An example is] an augmented reality application where you’re looking through the camera on your phone and … you see a 3D model appear.”

An immersive media design exhibit was held at The Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center as a part of NextNOW Fest in mid-September. About 15 students displayed their projects, Bendell said. 

In one student’s project, people were able to play chess remotely with others around the world, Miller said. 

“Instead of being limited to a two-dimensional point and click-with-your-mouse way of interacting with the chessboard, you actually saw a three-dimensional chess set in front of you that you could manipulate even though it doesn’t actually exist,” he added.

While all immersive design students need to have coding ability, the computer science track covers more of the technical components while the art track focuses on the perceptive side, Miller said.

Sophomore Maggie Letvin, a studio art major and hopeful immersive media design major, is planning on the art track. She’s used to approaching projects from the angle of an artist, and said that programming was hard for them.

“[With] programming, you have to know what you want to do ahead of time,” she said. “I approach art from a standpoint of, ‘I have the materials, I’m just gonna work with my hands and figure out what happens,’ but you can’t exactly do that with coding.”

In later years, students from the art track are paired with students from the computer science track. As a result, students are able to work with a partner from a different background and learn more from each other.

The New Directions Fund aims to enable important new lines of research and creative work with high potential for impact. There are three competition tracks:

 

 

 

  • Track A: Proof of Concept awards support researchers pursuing a new line of research or collaborative partnership to help them be competitive for external funding.
  • Track B: Limited External Grant Opportunity (LEGO) awards support particularly innovative and impactful research, writing, and/or creative work in fields where external funding is scarce.
  • Track C: NEW: Racial & Social Justice Research awards supports research on the underpinnings of, consequences of, and/or solutions to address systemic, institutional, and structural racism and injustice.

New Direction Proof of Concept awards are not intended to support research closely related to past work but rather to support exploratory work enabling a new line of research. This new line of research may be facilitated in part by new collaborative partnerships. Research may be basic or applied but should hold potential for future external funding.
New Direction Limited External Grant Opportunity (LEGO) awards also support new directions in faculty research, writing, and/or creative work but for fields with limited access to external funding. Proposed research should advance the body of knowledge and/or build UMD’s reputation in scientific and scholarly communities through a seminal publication, monograph, or other recognized means of discipline impact. Follow-up proposals to obtain external funding are not required though still encouraged.
NEW: Racial & Social Justice awards The Division of Research is inviting proposals relating to the underpinnings of, consequences of, and/or solutions to address systemic, institutional, and structural racism, racial and social in/justice, and other related areas. Please note that anything in Track C could fit into Tracks A & B but does not have to.

Examples of eligible projects in each of the above tracks include:
● Projects that obtain pilot data, demonstrate the feasibility of an approach or method, or contribute to the development of a prototype.
● Unique opportunities to conduct field work or research at an archive or special collection.
● Projects leading to seminal work intended for publication with an academic press.
● The development and execution of particularly innovative creative work that will be exhibited or performed in nationally or internationally known venues.
● Projects that examine the underpinnings and structures of systemic racial and social inequity and injustice, or lead to/inform antiracist policy, advocacy, education,
programming, and/or community organizing initiatives.

Support Provided:
New Directions funds can be requested at one of two levels:

● Level 1: $10,000 – $25,000 per award.
● Level 2: $25,001 – $50,000 per award.

Cost Share:
● VPR will fund 50% of the requested amount;

● The benefiting Unit(s) contribute the remaining 50% of requested funds.

Eligibility Criteria:
● Both tenured/tenure-track and professional track faculty (assistant research scientist or higher) whose full-time, home position is at UMD are eligible to apply.

● Track B only: No disciplines automatically qualify for Track B. Proposal should briefly detail the funding landscape and demonstrate the scarcity of external research funding opportunities for their discipline (and why New Directions funding is critical for the proposed effort). Contact the Research Development Office with questions.
● Faculty may only submit one New Directions proposal (as PI or co-PI) in a
given competition cycle.
● Faculty chosen as the principal investigator for past New Directions awards (or the
predecessor program “Tier 1” awards) within the last ten (10) years are not eligible to
compete to be principal investigator for New Directions awards.

 Award Fund Use:
Award funds may be applied to a range of cost categories, including but not limited to:

● Collection of pilot data required for agency/private proposal submission;
● Coordination of new multidisciplinary activities that will lead to development of
a proposal for external funding;
● Graduate student support to conduct proposed research;
● Hosting of conferences which bring visibility and expertise to UMD;
● Travel of UMD personnel to conduct research and/or to disseminate research;
● Research supplies;
● Faculty summer salary – Applicants should be prepared to justify why this summer
salary is vitally important.
● Track B only: Teaching release time (requires department chair authorization). Note that these New Directions Funds do not buy out faculty salaries directly but rather are intended to be used by departments to cover the costs of bringing on a replacement instructor.
● Funds must be spent within one calendar year of receipt of funds; if the work proposed
will require a longer period of performance, the application should state this and
provide justification.

Review Criteria and Process:
All proposals will be evaluated in accordance with the following criteria; limited review

feedback will be provided to all applicants. Proposals will be assigned reviewers that may or may not have direct expertise in your area of research, so writing for a broad technical audience is crucial.
● Technical approach: Does the project develop or employ novel concepts, approaches, methodologies, tools, or technologies? (Proposals should make clear the current state of the art.) Are the conceptual framework, design, methods, and analyses adequately developed, well-integrated, well-reasoned, and appropriate to the aims of the project? Do proposed outcomes represent a new paradigm for concepts in this area of research?
● Societal relevance: What are the potential implications of this research for society? Does this study address a problem with regional, national, or global significance? Does the proposed project align with strategic goals of the department, college, or UMD?
 Alignment with the goals of the New Directions Fund award tracks:

  • Tracks A and B: Does the proposal make clear how the proposed project would be a new direction of investigation for the faculty involved? Could the work be conducted without New Directions Fund support? Would it facilitate a new collaborative partnership? (Preferred but not required).
  • Track B only: Does the proposal make a compelling case that, while work would be significant to the field, external funding sources are severely limited?
  • Track C: Does the proposed research have the potential to lead to innovations, policy changes, or recommendations to address systemic, institutional, or structural racism; and/or transformative and/or healing impact on communities affected by racism/racial trauma? Proposals that focus on local challenges and impact Prince George’s County, the State of Maryland, or the DMV region are encouraged.

● Likely project outcomes: The proposal should clearly articulate significance or
expected impact on both the faculty member’s professional development and the larger relevant discipline. Is the effort likely to catalyze new lines of research for the PI or inspire follow-on work by others in the field? Will this effort lead to new lasting
technical capacity at the University that could enable new lines of research for others in the future? Does the proposal include robust plans to share and disseminate results through multiple platforms to various audiences? Is the project likely to result in new scholarly recognition and/or visibility for the University?

  • Track A only: Do the investigators present reasonable plans to garner extramural support from specific funding agencies? Proposal should demonstrate why the proposed scope of work will improve the proposer’s ability to secure external funding, and should include a detailed plan for obtaining future support (ideally with more than one external funding program identified).

Application Process and Materials:
In addition to completing the electronic submission form, all application materials must be uploaded in one PDF file and must be submitted electronically by 11:59pm ET on the deadline date. The electronic submission form can be found at https://umd.infoready4.com/.

Application materials include:
● Universal Funding Form with department/college signatures affirming willingness to support 50% of the request.

● Project Narrative: not to exceed three single-spaced pages (plus up to one additional page of figures if needed), with one-inch margins and at least 11-point font, detailing:

  • Project background and objectives (including ties to previous faculty research);
  • Innovation and impact (including alignment with organizational priorities);
  • Approach and research plan (listing specific tasks);
  • Strategies to leverage award, optimize outcomes, and increase impact; and
  • High level implementation timeline.
  • Proposals should be written for a non-specialist reviewer.

● References (does not count against the page limit)
● Budget and Justification: Budget and justification should demonstrate that you have
thought through all aspects of your project and the costs associated with them.
Include any other sources of funding that will be supporting the project (if applicable)
and whether those funds are committed or pending.

  • Justification should include details of unspent start-up, gift, or retention funding.

● Biosketch or CV for the submitting principal investigator and for any co-investigators if applicable (up to two pages each).

The InfoReady online submission form will also request:

  • Title,
  • co-investigator information (names, titles, affiliations and emails), and
  • project summary (suggested length: 150 words max).

Expectations of Applicants and Awardees:
● An annual progress report must be completed for two (2) consecutive years.

● Within two years of award, at least one of the following deliverables should be
completed: a related research proposal submitted to an external funding agency, written publication submitted to a journal or book publisher, book contract secured, and/or creative work exhibited or performed.
If these expectations are not met, the faculty member’s department may not be eligible for New Directions funds for one year.

9/16/21

Michigan State University has received a $650,000 grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to continue the work being done by the Humane Metrics for the Humanities and Social Sciences (HuMetricsHSS) initiative, an international partnership committed to establishing more humane indicators of excellence in academia with a particular focus on the humanities and social sciences.  

The goal of the HuMetricsHSS initiative is to empower people at all levels of academic institutions by identifying core values and aligning reward mechanisms in every area — from grades and funding to promotion and tenure — with those values. 

The initiative is led by an international group of co-PIs from the academic and nonprofit sectors including Christopher Long, Michigan State University, Dean of College of Arts & Letters and Dean of the Honors College; Nicky Agate, University of Pennsylvania, Snyder-Granader Assistant University Librarian for Research Data and Digital Scholarship; Rebecca Kennison, K|N Consultants, Executive Director and Principal; Jason Rhody, Social Science Research Council, Program Director;  Simone Sacchi, European University Institute, Open Science Librarian; Bonnie Thornton Dill, University of Maryland, College Park, Dean of the College of Arts and Humanities and Professor in The Harriet Tubman Department of Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies; Penny Weber, Social Science Research Council Digital Culture Program, Projects Coordinator, and HuMetricsHSS Project Manager; and Bonnie Russell, Michigan State University, MESH Research and HuMetricsHSS Assistant Project Manager. 

Established in 2016, the HuMetricsHSS initiative arose from a growing sense that the work by faculty and staff of academic institutions was increasingly driven by opaque and limited assessment mechanisms that reward a narrow scope of activities and fail to recognize the wide array of publicly focused, socially oriented scholarship that motivates faculty, staff, students, and administrators.  

The initiative began working with academic institutions to create a values-enacted approach for recognizing labor that is often invisible, underappreciated, and unrewarded and that supports engaged and socially responsible scholarship and scholarly practice by aligning the values that animate that work with the activities that bring it to life.  

This is the third grant the HuMetricsHSS initiative has received from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. The first, awarded in 2017 for $309,000, allowed for a series of workshops that identified values and practices to enrich scholarship in an effort to better recognize, promote, and nurture scholarly practices. The second Mellon grant, awarded in 2019 for $695,000, funded the first implementation round of the initiative.  

“We stand at an inflection point of transformative change in higher education,” Long said. “There is an openness to new approaches and an appreciation of the action-oriented examples the HuMetricsHSS initiative offers.”  

The world has changed dramatically since the initial two grants were awarded.   

“The systemic inequities that were already obvious to many have come to the fore in the last year with the COVID-19 pandemic and the reckoning with racism with which we are grappling,” Thornton Dill said. “Within the academy, hierarchical inequities that undervalue teaching, which is central to the academic endeavor, have now become undeniably evident, as have issues of social and economic precarity among student populations, many of whom are now grappling not only with increased debt or financial burdens but also with the challenges of studying and learning in home environments that may not be safe or supportive for them.”  

Similar levels of precarity, driven by the economic uncertainties of tuition-driven revenue, are keenly felt by contingent faculty and hourly waged staff, many of whom are recent graduate students who may carry considerable debt load.  

“As we have learned through discussions with faculty and administrators in our workshops and through the research interviews facilitated by Foundation funding, inequalities and inequities appear to be growing rather than shrinking,” Kennison said. “Faculty, staff, and administrators are urgently searching for values-enacted evaluation frameworks that enable them to reshape the culture of higher education so that the academy is more humane, supportive, open, and just.” 

Under this latest Mellon grant, over the next 18 months, the HuMetricsHSS initiative will: 

  • provide models of institutional transformation to demonstrate the potential of values frameworks in applied settings while fostering greater engagement in additional institutions;  
  • scale-up training and infrastructure to support the use of values frameworks through developing train-the-trainer workshops and by enhancing the HuMetricsHSS toolkit;  
  • build and expand communities of practice by fostering engaged, cross-pollinating networks through regular communication, facilitating collaboration through knowledge sharing and transparent idea generation, and coordinating with aligned initiatives on messaging and amplification of the work.  

“For the next phase of HuMetricsHSS work, we envision operating on several axes that focus on engagement, implementation, scalability, and sustainability,” Rhody said. “Each of these efforts sets the framework for institutional transformation, building toward the long-term goal for HuMetricsHSS to support widespread transformation across a supported, funded institutional cohort.” 

9/14/21

By Rosie Grant

Professor of English Jessica Enoch has been named the 2021–22 ARHU ADVANCE Professor, a two-year role during which she will mentor and support ARHU faculty seeking to get published and promoted, find greater work-life balance and more.

ADVANCE faculty are part of the university’s ADVANCE Program, which is housed within the Office of Faculty Affairs and supports the recruitment, retention and professional growth of a diverse faculty through faculty networks, education and training, advocacy and research. Each college has an ADVANCE professor, which are all women.

Enoch, the director of the Academic Writing Program and a mother of three, said she has a particular interest in supporting working parents. During the COVID-19 pandemic, she has experienced firsthand the difficulties of balancing teaching with childcare and virtual school.

“I am especially concerned with women faculty who have taken on the brunt of childcare during the pandemic,” she said.

She also plans to help women and assistant professors of color acclimate themselves to the university and prepare for promotion.

ADVANCE began in 2010 as a five-year, NSF-funded campuswide project promoting institutional transformation with respect to the retention and advancement of women faculty in STEM. Since then it has increased the percentage of women in tenure-track faculty roles and was recognized by the National Science Foundation as an exemplary program.

Enoch was formerly a participant in two ADVANCE mentorships, under Professor of English Laura Rosenthal and Professor of Communication Linda Aldoory. With Rosenthal she participated in a group of associate professors who worked to complete their second monograph and earn promotion to full professor. The four women in this group have completed their books and have earned, or soon will earn, promotions. With Aldoory, Enoch took on the role of mentor to two associate professors, meeting virtually during the pandemic to discuss strategies for publication and promotion.

“I have seen firsthand the great benefit of the ADVANCE program,” she said.
 
Enoch was selected in coordination with the ARHU Dean's Office and will hold the position for two years. She is the third English professor to hold this appointment, after Professor of English Martha Nell Smith and Rosenthal.

9/13/21

By Jessica Weiss ’05

Dean Bonnie Thornton Dill has announced the appointment of Professor of Musicology Patrick Warfield as the Associate Dean for Arts and Programming in the College of Arts and Humanities, effective October 4, 2021.

The position is new to the college, responsible for supporting visual and performing arts units and programs, directing the new campuswide Arts For All initiative and administering programming across the arts and humanities.

“It’s a hugely important and exciting time for the arts at the University of Maryland, and I am so thrilled to have Patrick at the helm,” said Dean Thornton Dill. “He brings a strong record of research and teaching, a variety of administrative experiences and, most importantly, a deep belief in the power of the arts to address grand challenges.” 

Working closely with the dean, faculty and administrators, Warfield will provide administrative oversight, coordination, management, advocacy and facilitation of the creative, performing, visual and digital arts in the college and promote and represent the accomplishments and needs of the arts within the Office of the Dean, on the campus and beyond. 

As director of Arts For All, the new campuswide arts initiative and one of President Darryll J. Pines’ five bold actions to “move Maryland forward,” Warfield will work to expand arts programming across campus and galvanize collaborations between the arts, technology and social justice. In this position, Warfield will connect and facilitate activities of participating partners; support and ensure implementation of all aspects of the initiative; promote and amplify the visibility and impact of the initiative on campus, locally and nationally; and refine and elaborate the vision for the initiative over time. 

Warfield called the new role a “dream come true.”

“I look forward to rolling up my sleeves and building the faculty, staff and student coalitions that will allow the arts, the humanities and the sciences to flourish on campus, connect with one another deeply, and create a meaningful and positive impact on our world,” he said.

Warfield has taught musicology, the historical and cultural study of music, at the University of Maryland School of Music since 2009. He has also served as director of graduate studies and associate director in the School of Music, as well as on a number of campuswide committees. In the School of Music he helped to create the Inclusivity, Diversity, Equity, and Access committee, establish the Collington residency program, which sends two graduate students from the school to live and work as artists-in-residence at the nearby Collington Continuing Care Retirement Community, and worked to create partnerships with Prince George’s County Public Schools, including programs that helped to strengthen teacher training and provide virtual lessons during the pandemic.     

A scholar of American musical culture, primarily American music of the 19th and 20th centuries, Warfield is the author of two books on John Philip Sousa, an American composer and conductor known primarily for his band music and marches; he is currently working on a book on the United States Marine Band. His publications have appeared in The Journal of the American Musicological Society, American Music, The Journal of the Society for American Music and Nineteenth-Century Music Review.

Warfield is also an affiliate faculty member in the Department of American Studies.

He earned a Ph.D. and M.A. from Indiana University, both in musicology, and a B.M.E. in music education from Lawrence University. 

9/13/21

University President Darryll J. Pines sent the following email to the campus community this morning:

Today, we officially launch Arts for All, a campuswide initiative that seeks to humanize the world’s grand challenges and integrate the arts more fully into conversation with the sciences and technology, enriching all.

There is transformational power at the intersection of the arts and the sciences. Solutions to some of today’s most pressing challenges—structural racism, gender inequality, climate change, global health disparities and others—need the arts and humanities to help us understand the historical, cultural, linguistic and artistic expressions that shape our world and to discover people-centered solutions.

Arts for All will create new curriculum, including the new undergraduate program in Immersive Media and Design co-developed by the Department of Art and the Department of Computer Science that debuted this semester, and the Maya Brin Institute for New Performance will prepare students for emerging fields in webcasts and virtual reality performance. These exciting new initiatives will inspire artistic and technological makers to investigate and create new connections that activate social change.

In the spirit of bringing art and culture to a wider audience, an expanded NextNOW Fest, presented by The Clarice, launches today. Throughout the week, NextNOW Fest events will occur in venues across campus as well as in College Park. Under the theme of “Where Creativity and Community Converge,” dozens of free events will celebrate imagination and creative expression.

I would like to invite every member of our campus community to be a full participant in this expanded arts programming. At the heart of the Arts for All initiative lies a deep commitment to providing interdisciplinary opportunities to make connections in and out of the classroom that empower all of us to address complex problems in new and meaningful ways.

Some highlights from NextNOW Fest 2021 and future Arts for All programming include:

  • Immersive Media Design Showcase (Sept. 16-17; Brendan Iribe Center for Computer Science and Engineering): Students in the new Immersive Media Design major showcase projects that push the boundaries of reality and break barriers in the arts.
  • NextNOW Fest at The Hall CP (Sept. 19, The Hall CP): A day-long celebration of the arts featuring workshops, interactive installations and live performance from campus and community artists and arts organizations.
  • American Landscapes (Sept. 9-Nov. 19; David C. Driskell Center): A new exhibition that highlights overlooked Black artists in American artistic tradition. In conjunction with this exhibition, a symposium will be presented on Oct. 28, with opportunities to attend in person and virtually.
  • Arts and Humanities Dean’s Lecture Featuring Vijay Gupta (Oct. 21): The College of Arts and Humanities presents violin prodigy and social justice advocate Vijay Gupta, who in 2007 became the youngest violinist ever to join the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and has emerged as a leading voice for the role of music to heal, inspire, provoke change and foster social connection.
  • Hookman (Nov. 13-21): Lauren Yee's Hookman tells the story of Lexi, a college freshman who is haunted by the sudden death of her childhood best friend—all while navigating the pressures of being a young woman entering adulthood. Directed by Nathaniel P. Claridad ’04, the School of Theatre, Dance, and Performance Studies' production brings the horror film genre to the stage, inviting audiences to explore themes of grief, trauma and guilt in an up close and personal way. This is the inaugural production of the Maya Brin Institute for New Performance.

Our world needs artists whose work helps us address grand challenges and explore the complexities of the human experience. Together, let’s celebrate the power of creativity—music, theater, dance, visual arts, design, creative writing—to improve the lives of all humankind.

Sincerely,

President Darryll Pines Signature

Darryll J. Pines
President, University of Maryland
He/Him/His

 

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