Dance faculty joins Jacob’s Pillow leadership team
Dance professor and former department chair Gerald Casel is joining the Jacob’s Pillow leadership team as the new Carole and Dan Burack Director of The School at Jacob’s Pillow in Becket, MA.
NEWS
Art & Design faculty and Rutgers–NB Laureate fosters connections between art and science
Sue Huang’s project examines plant extinction scientifically and culturally. “There is the physical realm, where we lose the actual body of a species, but there is also the loss of a species in our social memory, which feels especially profound. . .because we lose our emotional relationship to those beings,” she says.
Fall 2025: Meet our new faculty
This year we welcome to our full-time faculty new arrivals in Art & Design, Music, and Theater. Get to know the newest members of our teaching community.
Nancy Yunhwa Rao named Board of Governors Professor of Music
The Rutgers Board of Governors acknowledged Rao’s “award-winning scholarship on a wide array of topics, including gender and music, sketch studies, musical modernism, cultural fusion and racial representation.”
Ellen Bredehoft named interim dean
Associate Dean for Academic Affairs Ellen Bredehoft will assume the role of Interim Dean of Mason Gross School of the Arts, effective July 1, 2025, as the university continues the search for the school’s next permanent Dean.
Art & Design faculty named inaugural Rutgers–NB Laureate
Sue Huang has been named the inaugural Rutgers–New Brunswick Laureate for the 2025-26 academic year, working on a cross-disciplinary project that is meant to bridge the arts and sciences.
Two Art & Design professors named 2025 Guggenheim Fellows
Marc Handelman was recognized in the Fine Arts category, Miranda Lichtenstein in the Photography category. They are among 198 fellows selected this year from a pool of nearly 3,500 across 53 disciplines.
Dean to serve as Provost and Executive Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs
Dr. Geary is set to assume the role of Provost and Executive Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs at Rutgers–New Brunswick, effective July 1, 2025. A nationwide search is underway to find the next dean for Mason Gross.
Theater project supports formerly incarcerated people reentering society
Ritual4Return is the brainchild of Kevin Bott, director of Rutgers Arts Online. The project works with people coming home after incarceration to develop a ritual through theatrical storytelling that helps them move on from their experiences.
Nancy Yunhwa Rao: Honorary member of American Musicological Society
Rao has been honored “for her contributions to musicology, in particular her achievements in fostering cross-cultural dialogue between Anglophone music studies and music research in Chinese-speaking lands, as well as her efforts to bridge the divide between musicology and her home discipline of music theory.”