FROM STAFF REPORTS

Dr. Steven Peters, dean of the University of Montevallo College of Fine Arts, has partnered with Dr. Aldemaro Romero Jr., dean of the Weissman School of Arts and Sciences at Baruch College in New York, to co-edit a book aimed at strengthening administration among arts businesses.

The groundbreaking book “Leonardo’s Children: Stories on Creativity by Fine Arts Leaders that will Blow Your Mind” is a collection of 13 articles by 19 authors from the United States and Europe touting the role and importance of creativity in administrating arts business, whether the administrator is an academic dean or an arts manager. The book shows, through numerous practical examples, how to succeed as an administrator and the personal joy one can have in doing so.

The chapters in the book show how many different institutions of higher education have taken a different and more creative approach to marketing their programs focusing not on conventional approaches such as rankings, but rather by emphasizing academic initiatives aimed toward a new generation of students who look for a place in society after graduation.

The book is being published by the International Council of Fine Arts Deans.

About the co-editors

Steven J. Peters, Ph.D. has been an ICFAD member for over a decade. He is dean of the College of Fine Arts at University of Montevallo.

His leadership at Montevallo has entailed positioning the arts as a driver of campus-wide innovation through new curricula in digital filmmaking and new media, cross-college partnerships, the construction of two multi-million-dollar fine arts facilities and a new “collaboratory” for the arts that opens in January 2020.

An advocate for the arts, Peters is the founder of the annual Forte Festival of Creativity, a creative placemaking and revitalization project linking artists and communities in Alabama. He was president of the Association for Theatre in Higher Education, served on the boards of the Council of Colleges of Arts and Sciences and the Kansas Association for the Arts in Education and he led the Wichita Arts Council’s Cultural Funding Committee that awarded grants to the city’s legacy and emerging arts organizations.

Originally trained as a director, playwright and designer, Peters is a practicing artist who pursues an active research agenda focusing on the construct of performance as a frame for examining practices in healthcare, medicine and organizational dynamics.

Aldemaro Romero Jr. is the dean and professor at the Weissman School of Arts and Sciences at Baruch College, City University of New York.

He received his bachelor’s degree in biology from the University of Barcelona, Spain, and his Ph.D. in biology from the University of Miami.

He has published more than 1,000 pieces including more than 30 books and monographs. He has developed a great number of outreach programs that include, but are not limited to, use of traditional media as well as the emerging electronic, social ones.

He has produced, directed, written and hosted hundreds of TV and radio shows while writing hundreds of non-academic pieces in the form of regular newspaper columns and magazine articles.

He is embarked in these initiatives even today. His academic interests range from environmental and evolutionary biology to history and philosophy of science, to science communication and higher education.

He has been awarded numerous grants as well as prizes for his research and science communication work.