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Douglas Dempster '77, who had been acting interim dean of the College of Fine Arts at the University of Texas at Austin since fall 2006 and senior associate dean of the college since 2001, has been appointed dean of the college. Dempster, who holds the Marie and Joseph D. Jamail Senior Regents Professorship and the Effie Marie Cain Regents Chair in Fine Arts as a professor in the college's department of theatre and dance, was named after a national search.

Prior to joining the university, Dempster held a faculty position for 18 years at the Eastman School of Music and the University of Rochester. He held appointments in the departments of humanities, philosophy, music theory and musicology, and was humanities department chair and associate director and dean of academic affairs. Well-known nationally for curricular reform in professional arts schools, he was founding director of the Eastman School's Arts Leadership Program. As senior associate dean of the College of Fine Arts since 2001, he was chief academic and operational officer of the college, which is composed of three academic units, Art and Art History; the School of Music; and Theatre and Dance, as well as the Blanton Museum of Art and the Performing Arts Center. With research specialties in aesthetics; philosophy of music theory; cultural policy studies and the philosophy of language, Dempster teaches and is widely published in a diverse range of fields. He earned his doctoral and master's degree in philosophy at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and wrote his dissertation on the semantics of representation and realism in the visual arts.

Dempster earned his St. Lawrence degree in philosophy and government. He was elected to the leadership honorary society Omicron Delta Kappa.

Posted: December 12, 2007