Kurt Daw
Dean of the School of Fine and Performing Arts
Kurt Daw has served as Dean of the School of Fine and Performing Arts at the State University of New York at New Paltz since 2003.
Daw is the academic leader of the School of Fine and Performing Arts, which includes the departments of Art, Art History, Music and Theatre Arts. He is also in charge of the three related units of the Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art, PianoSummer Institute and Festival and the Premiere Performance Series.
The current enrollment of the School of Fine and Performing Arts is at 1,000 students. Daw supervises a full-time faculty of 55, a part-time faculty that averages 30, as well as 21 staff members.
Prior to joining the SUNY New Paltz administration, Daw was the chair of the Department of Theater at Kennesaw State University in Atlanta Georgia and in 2001 he was selected as a fellow of the American Council on Education producing seminars on educational issues and policies. Prior to that, Daw was a Presidential Fellow and the chair of the Core Curriculum Committee at Kennesaw State University.
Daw was the president of the Association for Theatre in Higher Education (ATHE),an 1,800-member organization of individuals and institutions that provides vision and leadership for the profession and promotes excellence in theater education, from 2001 to 2003 and 2004 to 2005.
He is the author of “Acting: Thought into Action” and “Acting Shakespeare and His Contemporaries.” He served as editor for “The Electronic Workbook: Essays Generated from the Shakespeare and the Languages of Performances Institutes.”He is also the author of more than thirty articles and essays for various campus publications and theatrical programs.
Daw earned his Bachelor of Arts in Theatre Literature and Criticism from the University of Idaho in Moscow, Idaho and his Master of Arts in Theatre Directing from the Professional Theater Training Program at the Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas. He earned his Ph.D. in Higher Education Administration from The Union Institute Graduate School in Cincinnati, Ohio.
He is a member of the Children’s Media Project board of directors in Poughkeepsie and the Poughkeepsie Institute board; he has held both since 2005. He was recently elected to the executive board of the Council of Fellows of the American Council on Education.
Daw resides in New Paltz, N.Y.