Harvey Young to Step Down as Dean of the College of Fine Arts, Will Continue as Vice President for the Arts
Harvey Young, dean of the College of Fine Arts since 2018, will step down from the role after a brief sabbatical. He’ll remain in his role as inaugural and interim vice president for the arts until a permanent vice president is named. Photo by Doug Levy
Harvey Young to Step Down as Dean of the College of Fine Arts, Will Continue as Vice President for the Arts
After a sabbatical next year, he will return to teach at CFA
Harvey Young, dean of the College of Fine Arts (CFA) since 2018, will step down from the role following a brief, planned sabbatical. In the meantime, Young, who was appointed inaugural and interim vice president for the arts in the fall, will continue on in that role throughout his sabbatical and until a permanent vice president is named.
He’ll begin his yearlong sabbatical at the end of the spring semester and, following its completion, will also return to CFA as a member of the faculty.
“Serving as dean of the College of Fine Arts has been a privilege, and I am deeply grateful to the faculty, staff, students, and alumni whose creativity and commitment define this college,” Young says.
“I will remain an advocate for President Gilliam’s inspiring vision for an increasingly arts-rich Boston University and, of course, for our amazing College,” Young wrote in an email to CFA students, faculty, and staff on February 5. “In addition, I will squeeze in a sabbatical—my first in 13 years—to finish writing a book and (more personally significant) to experience the college application process from the perspective of a parent. On the other side of sabbatical, I look forward to teaching more regularly.”
In a letter to the BU community sent on the same day, Gloria Waters, University provost and chief academic officer, highlighted Young’s “transparent, accessible, and consistent leadership” throughout his tenure, adding that he’s “elevated and helped facilitate greater distinction for the three schools within CFA as well as the Boston University Tanglewood Institute, BU Art Galleries, BU Bands, and Wheelock Family Theatre.”
“Please join me in thanking Harvey Young for his leadership and wishing him well as he embarks on this next chapter,” Waters wrote.
To some extent, Young’s next chapter has already begun. As inaugural vice president for the arts, Young helped establish BU’s new Office for the Arts, a hub for developing and celebrating the arts at BU. The office supports University-wide programs that advance community-building through the arts, encourage interdisciplinary arts teaching and research, and highlight diverse artists and forms of artistry.
I am excited about expanding access to the arts at a scale unprecedented for a university.
“I am excited about expanding access to the arts at a scale unprecedented for a university. We have a visionary president in Dr. Gilliam,” Young says. “In addition, Kenneth Feld (Questrom’70), one of the world’s most admired business leaders, and I are cochairing an extraordinary international task force of accomplished, prominent thought leaders with experience making change at the scale of a city. There is so much potential to be realized.” (Feld is a former chair of Boston University’s Board of Trustees.)
Under Young’s leadership, the foundational activity on these fronts is already underway. The University formed a BU arts task force late last year to identify opportunities to expand existing arts programming or build out new ones. The Office for the Arts has also notched some early wins: its members expanded arts programming for student orientation in the fall, including a movie night, a photo scavenger hunt involving public art on campus, and craft activities inspired by the work of artist (and BU alumna) Howardena Pindell (CFA’65).
The Office for the Arts is also working with its partners in BU Human Resources to identify arts benefits for all BU staff and faculty, and arts office members helped launch Music Mondays at the Castle, a monthly music series at the Dahod Family Alumni Center at the Castle.
As dean of CFA, Young led the college to new heights. Since his appointment in 2018, CFA’s schools—the School of Visual Arts, the School of Music, and the School of Theatre—have risen in national recognition, with the School of Visual Arts climbing 20 spots in U.S. News & World Report’s graduate rankings and the School of Theatre being recognized by Playbill as a leading producer of Broadway creative teams.
Young also spearheaded a comprehensive curricular redesign within the college, launched new BA and MFA programs, improved the delivery of essential academic support for students, and expanded the reach of CFA’s public programs to ensure greater accessibility of the arts within BU and the broader Boston community. He also oversaw more than $110 million in facility improvements at CFA.
Still, Young says some of his proudest moments as dean came from the innovation and perseverance the CFA community displayed during the COVID-19 pandemic. Public health guidelines—physical distance and masking—”created obvious challenges for the performing arts, especially music: a wind instrument can propel breath nearly 15 feet,” Young says.
Young, an internationally recognized theater historian, came to BU from Northwestern University, where he was a professor and chair of the School of Communication’s theater department and held appointments in African American studies, performance studies, and radio/television/film. He graduated from Yale University in 1997 with a BA in film studies and later earned a master’s degree and a PhD in theater at Cornell University, before joining the faculty at Northwestern.
Waters will appoint an interim dean to begin by July 1, 2026.