Recognition of Professor Lynne Allen’s Service as Dean ad interim of the College of Fine Arts
From Dr. Jean Morrison, University Provost and Chief Academic Officer
As we prepare in January to welcome Harvey Young as the incoming Dean of the College of Fine Arts (CFA), I want to take this opportunity to offer special thanks and recognition to Professor Lynne Allen, who has provided exceptional leadership over the last two-plus years in the role of Dean ad interim during a crucial period of transition.
Dean ad interim Allen assumed leadership of CFA in May 2015 and was charged with leading internal conversations within the College to address fundamental questions of structure, organization, and strategic vision among CFA’s Schools of Music, Theatre, and Visual Arts. In the period since her appointment, she has succeeded in working collaboratively with faculty and staff to thoughtfully and meaningfully address many of the critical issues facing the College and has helped to place CFA on significantly stronger footing as a national destination for artistic scholarship and creation.
Among her significant accomplishments as Dean ad interim is the development of a Vision Book in coordination with a task force of CFA faculty and staff – a roadmap for implementing eight strategic objectives to strengthen the College and catalyzing the arts as a foundation for CFA and BU’s learning community. Many of these objectives are already – or in the process of – being implemented, including the creation of a unified arts course for all incoming freshmen; major efforts to improve efficiencies across the College’s reporting areas; coordination and centralization of the College’s branding and marketing strategies; mentoring of new faculty on promotion criteria; the formation of new cross-disciplinary courses across the three Schools; and the successful recruitment of talented underrepresented minority faculty members. Dean ad interim Allen has been a leader in the integration of arts courses into the BU Hub curriculum, now in development. She has overseen the School of Visual Arts’ successful accreditation to the National Association of Schools of Art & Design, and she has been a driving force in overseeing the design and construction of the Joan & Edgar Booth Theatre and the BU Design and Production Center, transforming the arts landscape on Commonwealth Avenue. All are efforts that advance CFA’s and Boston University’s missions and reputation for excellence.
In January, Dean ad interim Allen will return to her role as Professor and Director of the School of Visual Arts – a position that she has held since her initial appointment at BU in 2006. She will continue to provide critical leadership on a host of core University-wide issues, including the successful participation of CFA in the implementation of the BU Hub. She will likewise return to her own artistic and scholarly production and to the international following her work has garnered. Dean ad interim Allen’s vibrant nature- and culturally-inspired prints and objects have been featured in more than 100 exhibitions in the United States and are today included in the collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Museum of Modern Art Library, the New York Public Library, the Corcoran Gallery of Art, the Library of Congress, and the Victoria & Albert Museum, among others. She has received two Fulbright Scholarships and two Andrew Mellon Foundation Research Grants among numerous honors and has held artist residencies at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts and the Plains Art Museum, as well as in Canada, Sweden, Belgium, Russia, Jordan, and South Africa.
I know that you join President Brown and me in thanking Professor Allen for her service and her many contributions as Dean ad interim of CFA. We are grateful for her leadership and her commitment to further developing and advancing excellence at the College of Fine Arts and Boston University.