Wm. Robert Bucker
Executive Director
Valley Performing Arts Center at
California State University, Northridge
Robert Bucker, Dean of the Mike Curb College of Arts, Media, and Communication at California State University, Northridge since 2007, has extensive experience in university administration and independent sector arts organization management. His first position in higher education was as Assistant Dean and Director of Development for the College of Fine Arts and Applied Arts at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (1992-95). He then served as Dean of the School of Fine Arts at the University of Minnesota-Duluth (1997-2001), and Dean of the Peck School of the Arts at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee (2001-07).
Dean Bucker took a break from academia between 1995-97 to serve as Director of the Education Department for the Metropolitan Opera-Metropolitan Opera Guild in New York City. During his tenure with the Met, he developed a semester-long residency program entitled "Leadership and the Arts in New York," developed with Duke University faculty. He served as an adjunct professor at Duke University and co-directed this program for ten years between 1995-2005.
In Wisconsin, he was a member of the leadership team for the Teachers for a New Era (TNE) K-12 education reform project, underwritten by the Carnegie Corporation in New York, the Annenberg Foundation, and the Ford Foundation.
Founder, director and conductor of the Choral Arts Ensemble of Kansas City, Bucker holds the rank of professor of music at CSUN. He is a graduate of Harvard University’s Management Development Program and Institute for Management and Leadership in Education. Bucker earned his doctor of musical arts and master of music degrees at the University of Missouri, Kansas City. His bachelor’s degree was earned at the University of Missouri, Columbia.
