CalArts selects new provost

Recently hired Tracie Costantino comes from Rhode Island School of Design

California Institute of the Arts announced it has selected Tracie Costantino as its next Provost. Constantino comes from the Rhode Island School of Design where she was an interim provost.

“We are excited to have attracted a leader of Tracie’s experience, talent, and knowledge,” says CalArts’ President Ravi Rajan.

Costantino represents the first major hire by Rajan, who is in his first year as CalArts’ president. Costantino’s research focuses on the nature of the cognition in the arts, creativity and the transformative potential of aesthetic experience as an educative event.

In addition to being interim provost, Costantino also served as associate provost of teaching and learning as well as dean of faculty at the Rhode Island school. Before that, she was a tenured associate professor of art education at the University of Georgia. She received her undergraduate degree from Boston College, a master’s from Brown University, and her PhD from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

“I am excited and honored by this opportunity,” says Costantino. “CalArts has a well-deserved reputation for expanding the boundaries of art, which emanates from its faculty and their sincere commitment to radical pedagogy and the new forms and ideas it generates. I’m looking forward to getting to know CalArts and its dynamic community of citizen artists.”