UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music formally approved by UC Board of Regents

January 21, 2016

Please join us in congratulating our colleagues in the Herb Alpert School of music on the formation of their new stand-alone school. Bravo!

The University of California Regents voted today to formally establish the UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music, and campus officials named an interim dean for the first music school in the UC system.

Judi Smith, dean and vice provost emerita of the UCLA College, will serve as interim dean. Since July 2015, Smith has served as the school’s executive director, emphasizing its commitment to a balanced focus on scholarship, performance, composition and teaching of music in all its contemporary and historical diversity.

The school has approximately 450 undergraduate and graduate students and offers bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degrees through three highly rated academic departments, each with internationally acclaimed faculty.

UCLA’s proposal to transfer the ethnomusicology and music departments from the School of the Arts and Architecture, and the musicology department from the division of humanities received extensive input from students, faculty and staff. It was approved by faculty leaders at both the campus and UC system levels.

The Regents’ approval formally establishes UCLA’s 12th professional school and clears the way to conduct a search for an inaugural dean.

“This is a significant moment for UCLA — a new academic unit that demonstrates our continued commitment to the performing and visual arts through scholarship, education and public programming,” Chancellor Gene Block said. “The faculty, students and staff who worked so hard to make this a reality deserve our thanks.”— Phil Hampton, Jan. 21

Read the full article at the UCLA Newsroom website.

For more information about the UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music please visit www.schoolofmusic.ucla.edu