Staff
James C. Marchant, Director of the Utah Center for Arts Administration and Director of the Arts Administration M.F.A. Program at Southern Utah University, has worked and volunteered extensively in the nonprofit and public sector over the last twenty-five years. Most recently, he served as the Program Coordinator of the graduate Arts Administration program at the Savannah College of Art & Design.
Dr. Marchant has experience in nonprofit administration, fundraising, financial management, marketing, legal issues in the arts and labor and employee relations. He has been involved with art organizations such as Oval House Theatre, BalletMet Columbus, Golden Gate Opera, and numerous choral organizations and theatres around the United States. In the social service sector, Dr. Marchant has worked with organizations such as the Washington Legal Clinic for the Homeless, the World Institute on Disability, Continuum, and Clean Fuels Ohio. He also worked for the City of New York as a licensed attorney where he focused primarily in employment law.
Originally from New Hampshire, Dr. Marchant obtained a Bachelor of Arts degree in Justice with a concentration in Theatre from The American University in Washington, DC, a Juris Doctor degree from the Beasley School of Law at Temple University in Philadelphia and a Doctor of Philosophy degree in Art Education focusing in Cultural Policy & Arts Administration with a Minor in Theatre & Performance from The Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio. He has research interests involving the sustainability of arts organizations, learning organization theory and its applicability to arts organizations, how the arts and culture are utilized to support communities and the role of artistic work in issues of social justice.
William Byrnes brings an extensive background in teaching and leadership in the arts to his capacity as former Dean of the CPVA. Byrnes currently serves as Associate Provost & Dean of Graduate Studies at SUU and is active in the classroom through his teaching in the Arts Administration Program. He teaches graduate seminars in board relations, fundraising and grant writing, economics and financial management, and leadership and organizational development over 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 (including SUU). The translation of the second edition into Chinese was published in 2004.
Before coming to SUU, Associate Provost Byrnes served as a Professor and Associate Dean of Florida State University's School of Theatre for 10 years. He also served as Director of the MFA Theatre Management program while at FSU. 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 as a Professor of Theatre.
Associate Provost Byrnes maintains a strong international presence with his service on the Advisory Board of the International Study Center for Economics (ISW), an international culture management training school located in Freiberg, Germany ( http://www.isw-freiburg.de). He is 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. In December 2001, Byrnes was inducted into the National Theatre Conference (NTC), an honorary society of theatre professionals and distinguished educators.