Interim Associate Provost and Dean of Graduate Studies
Professor William Byrnes brings an extensive background in academic administration, management, teaching, and leadership to his current role as Interim Associate Provost and Dean of Graduate Studies at Southern Utah University. Professor Byrnes has worked as an administrator at every level in higher education. He has been a curricular area head, program director, associate chair, chair, associate dean, and dean. In his current capacity, he works with the provost and deans to offer vision and to help guide the direction in the following areas: academic planning, assessment, accountability, regional and professional accreditation, program reviews, and institutional research. He works closely with the directors of the graduate programs to ensure the continued growth and development of the SUU graduate school.
Before assuming his current interim appointment, Professor Byrnes was hired in 2004 to serve as Dean of the College of Performing and Visual Arts. In his capacity as Dean, Byrnes worked with a talented and dedicated faculty and staff of 65 and over 560 majors in the departments of Art and Design, Music, Theater Arts and Dance, and a graduate program in Arts Administration (MFA). He helped develop, promote, and strengthen the College and its programs. In addition, he had oversight of the Braithwaite Fine Arts Gallery, the American Folk Ballet, and worked with the Tony Award-winning Utah Shakespearean Festival.
Professor Byrnes has been active in the classroom through his teaching in the SUU Arts Administration graduate program. He teaches seminars in board relations and strategic planning, fundraising and grant writing, economics and financial management, and leadership and organizational development on a two-year rotation. His textbook, Management and the Arts, now in its fourth edition, is widely used in arts and culture management courses throughout the world. The translation of the second edition into Chinese was published in 2003.
Before coming to SUU, Byrnes served as Associate Dean of Florida State University's School of Theatre for 10 years. He also served as Director of the Theatre Management master’s degree program while at FSU. He oversaw the reorganization of an extensive production program, supervised the design and production faculty and administrative staff, and was responsible for supervising the overall marketing for the School's production season. He taught a series of six graduate seminars in arts administration in support of the Theatre Management program and two other arts administration degree programs on the FSU campus. He also served on the planning committee for the regional arts festival, “Tallahassee: Seven Days of Opening Nights” and was a member of the Board of Directors of the Southern Shakespeare Festival.
Prior to his service at Florida State, he worked for 22 years at Oberlin College, in Oberlin Ohio, home of a highly regarded liberal arts college and outstanding Conservatory of Music. He started as a Lecturer and left there as a Professor of Theatre. He was technical director, production director, and director of the Theatre and Dance program, production manager for the Oberlin Opera Theatre, and Associate Chair of the theatre and Dance program. He taught numerous courses in design and production at Oberlin including an interdisciplinary course in arts administration. That course was the impetus in 1992 for his writing his text, Management and the Arts.
During his tenure at Oberlin, he maintained a busy schedule as a lighting designer and production manager. Professor Byrnes has created the lighting designs for over 80 college and 25 free-lance professional productions. His work has included lighting designs for over 18 productions for the Cleveland Opera Company as well as designs for Toledo Opera, Dayton Opera, Kentucky Opera, and the Porthouse Summer Theatre in Kent, Ohio. He was twice recognized with the Peggy S. Ezekiel Award for Outstanding Achievement in Lighting Design while in Ohio.
Professor Byrnes maintains a strong international presence with his service on the Advisory Board of the Institute for Languages and Economics (ISW), an international culture management training and business school located in Freiberg, Germany ( http://www.isw-freiburg.de ). He regularly lectures at ISW and was a guest speaker at a German statewide conference in 2004 entitled, “Mozart, Marketing, and Money.” In June 2003, he presented a short paper on “Culture Management Training in Five Years” at the International Conference on Culture Management and Education, in Turino, Italy. In January 2007, he lectured about current trends in arts administration training programs hosted by the Institute for Theatre Research at Waseda University in Tokyo, Japan. In October and November 2009, Byrnes lectured on arts and culture management and strategic planning in Changsha and Beijing China on the campuses of Hunan Normal University and Renmin University. Professor Byrnes is also a member of the Editorial Advisory Committee of the Asia Pacific Journal of Arts and Cultural Management.
He was the President of the U.S. Institute for Theatre Technology (USITT) in 2000-02. USITT is a 3800-plus international membership association of professionals in design, production, education, and technology in the performing arts. He is a Fellow of the Institute and was given the prestigious Founders Award in 1996 for his continued service to USITT and the theatre profession. He served as a board member and Vice President in USITT from 1985 to 2000. He currently is the editor for the “Inside USITT” section of the quarterly journal Theatre Design & Technology, serves on the Finance Committee, is a member of the Management Commission, and frequently presents at the USITT annual conference.
In December 2001, Byrnes was inducted into the National Theatre Conference (NTC), an honorary society of theatre professionals and distinguished educators. He also maintains active memberships in the Association for Theatre in Higher Education (ATHE), the Association of Arts Administration Educators (AAAE), the International Council of Fine Arts Deans (ICFAD), and in the Council for Advancement and Support in Education (CASE). Professor Byrnes also serves as a Director on the ESTA Foundation Board. The ESTA Foundation is a non-profit, tax-exempt organization in New York City established in 2005 to create and support educational and charitable programs for the entertainment technology industry. Professor Byrnes also is a member of the Board of the Cedar City Arts Council.
He holds a Bachelors degree in English from the University of New Mexico and a M.F.A. from UCLA in Design and Production. He was born and raised in Buffalo, NY. He and his wife Christine, who hails from Toledo, Ohio, live in the Cross Hollow Hills area of Cedar City. Their children Alison, Emily, and Matt live and work in Ohio and he has a daughter Julie, who works and lives in Sacramento, California.