Bowen named dean of Meadows school
Early Thursday morning university officials confirmed Jose Antonio Bowen as the incoming dean of the Meadows School of the Arts. Bowen is currently dean of the School of Fine Arts and professor of music at Miami University in Ohio.
"The excellence of the Meadows School of the Arts is central to our academic mission as a university," said SMU President R. Gerald Turner in a university press release. "Dr. Bowen is a distinguished musician and educator in the arts who also has a broad background in the humanities. He has the right talents to continue advancing the Meadows School as a cultural and academic resource for SMU and the broader community."
As dean, Bowen will oversee Meadows’ academic programs in art, art history, arts administration, advertising, through the Temerlin Advertising Institute, corporate communications and public affairs, journalism, cinema-television, dance, music and theatre.
“I’m thrilled. It’s a great honor,” Bowen said. “Meadows is so well positioned and its reputation is tremendous.”
Bowen said the students who he met with in a Q&A session during his visit to SMU in March that made a lasting impression.
“I’m still kind of bowled over by the number of students who attended,” he said.
At Miami, the news did not come as easy for his colleagues and students.
“There have been a lot of tears. It’s been a pretty emotional couple of days. I’ve made a lot of good friends here,” he said.
Though Bowen says he will miss Miami, he is ready to move on to “new and different things.”
Over the next few months, Bowen and his family are preparing for the transition.
His wife and daughter have begun looking for the family’s new home in Dallas and a school for his daughter.
He plans to be in Dallas by the middle of June with frequent trips in between.
Bowen holds four degrees from Stanford University: a joint PhD. in musicology and humanities, a master’s in music composition and humanities, and a bachelor’s in chemistry.
Before he arrived at Miami in 2004, Bowen taught at Stanford, University of Southampton in the United Kingdom and Georgetown University.
The president’s appointment ends a nationwide search led by R. Hal Williams, SMU dean of Research and Graduate Studies, and a committee comprised of 15 faculty, staff, students and trustees.
Bowen succeeds Carole Brandt, who has served as dean of Meadows since 1994. In 2001 Brandt oversaw the opening of the new Meadows Museum, funded by the Meadows Foundation, and in March 2006 a new gift of $33 million from the Foundation for museum, faculty and student resources. It was the largest gift ever made by the Meadows Foundation and the largest to SMU from an individual source.
