Steven Tepper was named the dean of Arizona State University's Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts, according to a recent announcement from ASU.
Tepper will leave his position as associate director of the Curb Center for Art, Enterprise, and Public Policy and associate professor of sociology at Tennessee's Vanderbilt University and begin his role as Herberger's dean on July 1, 2014.
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Before working at Vanderbilt, Tepper was deputy director of the Princeton University Center for Arts and Cultural Policy Studies. He went to undergrad at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, then got his master's in public policy at Harvard and Ph.D. in sociology at Princeton.
"When I arrive on campus, I want to discover and celebrate the amazing work that is happening," Tepper said in the release. "I plan to have a very open conversation with faculty, staff, and students about their ideas for advancing the institution. Transitions are a great time to build a positive energy and begin to imagine what we want to do, to think about what makes our work rewarding and how we can share that more passionately with our students and the community."
Michael Underhill has served as Herberger's interim dean since Dr. Kwang-Wu Kim left the position in June 2013. Herberger comprises ASU Art Museum and five schools: Art; Arts, Media + Engineering; Design; Film, Dance, and Theatre; and Music.
"The Herberger Institute provides an opportunity to reimagine what a 21st century arts school can be; enterprising, connected across disciplines, within communities and deployed to comment on and help solve the nation's most important problems," Tepper said in the release. "I want Herberger to be one of the first places people look, both for inspiration, as well as insight around important artistic, social, economic and policy challenges."
