(October 12, 2010) – New College of Florida President Gordon E. “Mike” Michalson has appointed Professor of Music Stephen Miles to a three-year renewable term as the College’s next Provost and Vice President of Academic Affairs, commencing July 1, 2011. Miles will succeed Charlene Callahan, who retires from the College next June following more than three decades of dedicated service.
“Steve’s outstanding record of accomplishment in the traditional areas of teaching, research and service includes the requisite strengths necessary to provide leadership to the faculty,” stated Michalson in announcing the appointment. “In addition, his administrative service as both a division chair and as the chair of key faculty committees gives him a broad-based perspective on faculty governance and overall administrative life at the College.”
Michalson added, “Steve’s extraordinary success in elevating New Music New College to its current level of prominence speaks, not only to his vision and organizational abilities, but also to his capacity for community outreach and fundraising as well.” Miles will continue to oversee the acclaimed contemporary music series in his new role as Provost.
“I am greatly honored by this appointment, which comes as New College celebrates its 50th anniversary as one of the most innovative institutions in American higher education,” stated Miles. “I will do my utmost to meet the exceedingly high standard set by Charlene Callahan for dedication to New College and leadership of its academic program.”
The Provost and Vice President of Academic Affairs leads the faculty and serves as the President’s liaison with them in all matters pertaining to the academic program, including both disciplinary and interdisciplinary areas of study. The Provost also oversees the various offices that directly support the academic program, including the Jane Bancroft Cook Library, the Office of Institutional Research and Assessment, and the Office of Research Programs and Services.
Michalson said that ten other faculty members were nominated for the Provost position. “The overall quality of the nominees was a reassuring sign of our institutional strength, as was the readiness with which many on campus offered me their genuinely thoughtful views on how best to proceed,” he said.
Dr. Stephen Miles holds a D.M.A. degree from the University of Illinois and has been on the New College faculty for over 20 years. He is an active composer, performer, and theorist, focusing on the social dimension of music. Since 1990, he has composed vocal music almost exclusively. In 2005, Miles’s De profundis clamavi, for twelve voices, was awarded Third Prize in The New York Virtuoso Singers’ First Annual Choral Composition Competition and was premiered by the NYVS in Manhattan. His works include Social Studies (2003), musical games for performers and audience, and Living and Dead: The Gettysburg Project (2009), a theater piece co-composed with Margaret Eginton, adjunct professor of theater at New College.
Miles founded and is director of New Music New College (NMNC), which functions as a laboratory for interdisciplinary research, with particular emphasis on musical composition, performance theory and social theory. In 2006, he presented papers on NMNC projects at two conferences in Vienna: the “Social Theory, Politics and the Arts” conference and the “International Conference on Cultural Policy Research.” He also has published articles about NMNC projects in such leading journals as Perspectives of New Music, Music and Arts in Action and in the edited volume, Audiences and the Arts: Communication Perspectives.
His most recent article appeared in TDR: The Drama Review (Summer 2010, Volume 54 Number 2), published by New York University and MIT. The article, “Seeing Cage, Hearing Beuys,” was based on the original performance of John Cage’s Song Books staged by Miles and his students at the John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art in 1998 at a major exhibition of Joseph Beuys’s multiples.
Miles will have just completed a year’s research leave at the time he assumes his new duties. In the intervening months, he will work with Provost Callahan and others on campus to ensure a smooth transition.
A veteran of 35 years at New College, Dr. Charlene Callahan has played an integral part in the College’s history and in the development of its academic program. As a graduate of Michigan State University with a Ph.D. in psychology, she arrived on campus as a faculty member in 1975, just as New College transitioned from being a private college to joining Florida’s state university system as a semi-autonomous honors college under the administration of the University of South Florida.
Twenty-five years later, when the Florida Legislature granted New College its independence from USF and designated the College as the state’s official “Honors College for the Arts and Sciences” in 2001, Callahan was appointed as the school’s first Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs.
Following a brief return to full-time teaching for the 2007-2008 and 2008-2009 academic years, as well as service as the College’s director of the Environmental Studies Program for 2008-2009, Dr. Callahan returned to the Provost’s Office in July 2009.