By Sharon Eberson
Robert Ramirez was named to head the Carnegie Mellon University School of Drama, one of the most prestigious theater arts programs in the world.
Ramirez will be on the job starting Aug. 1 and comes to Pittsburgh from the University of Texas at Austin, where he was a professor, senior associate chair, and interim chair of the Department of Theatre and Dance, before his appointment as department chair in March 2020.
Among his missions at UT Austin was working to transform hiring practices at the university, resulting in the addition of five full-time BIPOC tenure-track faculty members in the past two years, according to the CMU release announcing Ramirez’s appointment. He also created the role of a department intimacy director, “who addresses production needs, as well as curricular and pedagogical imperatives.”
“I’ve admired Robert’s leadership for years and could not be more delighted that he will be joining us at CMU. I’m absolutely convinced that he is the right person to take the School of Drama forward, in community and in this exact moment,” Mary Ellen Poole, dean of CMU’s College of Fine Arts, said in a statement.
He takes on the oldest degree-granting school of drama in the United States. CMU has graduated a long list of A-listers and award winners from Broadway and Hollywood, including Blair Underwood, Holly Hunter, Ted Danson, Billy Porter, Stephen Schwartz, John Wells, Renee Elise Goldsberry, Judith Light, Jamie de Roy, Leslie Odom Jr. and more. Alumni have won 52 Tony Awards, 13 Academy Awards, and nearly 150 Emmys.
Ramirez’s prior education experience includes the faculties of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Marymount Manhattan College, and the American Musical and Dramatic Academy in New York City. He also has worked as a Shakespearean voice and text coach. He has performed with the New York, Utah, Illinois, Alabama, Baltimore, and Wisconsin Shakespeare festivals. You can hear him as an award-winning narrator of audiobooks, including Powder Burn by Carl Hiaasen and Bill Montalbano.
“The search committee to replace former School of Drama head Peter Cooke, who stepped down in the fall of 2020 after serving in that role since January 2009, was co-chaired by Sartje Pickett and Tomé Cousin and assisted by a team from Isaacson Miller as well as Amy Kapp,” Dean Poole said. Committee members were Carolyn Hess Abraham, Mindy Eshelman, Kyle Haden, Rob Handel, Cindy Limauro, Mica Harrison Loosemore, Britton Mauk, Catherine Moore, Susan Tsu, Miso Wei, Kim Weild, and Charlie White.
Categories: Arts and Ideas, Feature Stories
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