Dean of the Arts,
Professor of Music
University of California, Santa Cruz

houghtn@ucsc.edu

831.459.4940
Porter D268

Edward Houghton, Dean of the Division of Arts, has been with UCSC since 1970.

In 1962 he graduated from Rutgers University with high honors as a Henry Rutgers Scholar and Phi Beta Kappa.

In 1971 he received a Ph.D. in Music at UC Berkeley where he was awarded the first Eisner Prize "for creative achievement of the highest order."

From 1967 to 1970, he served as chairman of the Music Department at Rutgers University in Camden, New Jersey.

He began his career at UCSC in 1970, serving as Professor of Music, as Acting Dean of the Arts (1992-93), and as Dean (since 1993).

He served twice as the chair of the Department of Music, and was director of UC's Education Abroad Program in Padua, Italy, from 1976 through 1978.

In 1987 he was asked to supervise the planning and construction of $32 million in new capital facilities for the arts (The Music Center, Media Theater, Experimental Theater, Art Studios), completed in 1998.

Before becoming Dean, he regularly lectured on early music, taught counterpoint and conducting, and directed the University Chorus and Chamber Singers.

The themes of his leadership have been the synergy of scholarship and practice, the richness of cultural diversity, the incorporation of new technology, and the completion of an outstanding center for the arts.

In the master plan for the arts area (drafted in 2003), a pedestrian core links the existing facilities in art, theater arts, and music with a central plaza, bordered by an University Art Museum and a 1500-seat campus auditorium. The plan emphasizes creative interaction among master artists, emerging artists, students, and audiences.

A scholar and performer of Renaissance music, he is presently collaborating with Prof. Herbert Kellman on "A Critical Edition of the Chigi Codex," a multi-volume work to be published by the University of Chicago Press, for which he has received two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities. The Chigi Codex is a 15th-century manuscript, one of the most important sources of polyphonic music, held by the Vatican Library in Rome.