Jill Beck was appointed Lawrence University’s 15th president in January 2004 and assumed office on July 1. A native of Worcester, Massachusetts, she received her B.A. in philosophy and art history from Clark University, an M.A. in history and music from McGill University, and the Ph.D. in theatre history and criticism from the City University of New York.
Among the themes she has chosen for her presidency are to increase collaborative and complementary activities between the fine and performing arts and the traditional liberal arts and sciences and to encourage more active community engagement by Lawrence and its students.
Under her leadership, the college has created an innovative postdoctoral teaching fellowship program, the Lawrence University Fellows in the Liberal Arts and Sciences. During its first year, 2005-06, the Lawrence Fellows program brought eight new Ph.D.s to campus. As of its third year, the program has hosted a total of 18 Fellows in fields that have ranged from evolutionary biology and atomic physics to vocal coaching and ceramics.
In the spring of 2007, Dr. Beck organized and hosted the two-day conference “Tutorial Education: History, Pedagogy, and Evolution,” which brought recognized education leaders from Oxford University, Williams College, St. John's College of Annapolis, the College of Wooster and Sarah Lawrence College to campus for an examination of current practices in tutorial education at Oxford and leading liberal arts colleges in the United States. The Teagle Foundation has awarded a follow-up grant to support the next steps generated by the conference.
A nationally recognized authority on arts education, she is both a scholar and a practitioner of dance and choreography and has written extensively in the fields of dance history, theory, repertory, and technique and has directed ballet and modern dance repertory. She has served on the faculties of the City College of the City University of New York, The Juilliard School, Connecticut College, Southern Methodist University, and the University of California, Irvine. In 2008, she was invited to join the Wisconsin Task Force on Arts and Creativity in Education as well as the Wisconsin Liberal Education and America’s Promise (LEAP) Leadership Council.
As dean of the School of the Arts at the University of California, Irvine from 1995 to 2003, she was the driving force behind the establishment of two innovative programs for furthering the impact of the arts — the Center for Learning through the Arts and Technology, an interdisciplinary center for research focused on learning across disciplines, and ArtsBridge America.
ArtsBridge America has been recognized as a national model for the advancement of educational arts partnerships between universities and the K-12 community. The program offers hands-on experiences in the arts to school-age children, placing university students in K-12 classrooms as instructors and mentors. Under Dr. Beck’s direction, ArtsBridge America grew from a limited pilot program in California with seven student scholars in 1996 to a nationwide effort involving 30 campuses in 16 states and Northern Ireland.
In 2000, she co-chaired an international conference titled "Sciences for the Arts: Building a Coalition for Arts Education" that brought psychological and medical researchers together with artists and art educators, one of several ways in which she has worked to establish linkages between science and engineering and the arts.
A founding member of the Alliance of Dance Notation Educators, she is active in a number of professional organizations and as a participant in scholarly meetings and publications. She is a recipient of the Disney Corporation's Jack Linquist Award for Innovation, given in recognition of ArtsBridge America's creative approach to social problems; the American Red Cross Association's Clara Barton Award for humanitarian service in the arts; and the University of California, Irvine, Medal, the university's highest honor, for "visionary leadership in building community."
President Beck is married to Robert J. Beck, Ph.D., professor emeritus at the University of California, Irvine and a visiting professor of education at Lawrence University.
