ANN ARBOR—Bryan Rogers, currently head of the School
of Art and professor of art in the College of Fine Arts at
Carnegie Mellon University, has been recommended as dean of
the University of Michigan’s School of Art and Design,
effective during winter term. Rogers also will be
professor of art with tenure.

Bryan Rogers, currently head of the School of Art and professor of art in the College of Fine Arts at
Carnegie Mellon University, has been recommended as dean of
the University of Michigan’s School of Art and Design,
effective during winter term. Rogers also will be
professor of art with tenure.

A sculptor and installation artist with numerous
international showings to his credit, Rogers also is
founding director of the STUDIO for Creative Inquiry at
Carnegie Mellon. The STUDIO is an interdisciplinary center
in the five-school College of Fine Arts—art,
architecture, design, drama and music—that emphasizes
experimental, highly interdisciplinary projects connecting
the College to the University and to local and global
communities.

As head of the Carnegie Mellon’s School of Art since
1988, Rogers led the design and institution of a new four-
year undergraduate B.F.A. program and a new three-year
M.F.A. program. He also led the effort to develop a new
interdisciplinary undergraduate bachelor of arts and
sciences program, in which students concentrate in both one
of the sciences and one of the arts. Rogers established an
endowed lecture series in which more than 200 visiting
lecturers have participated, and led a long and successful
campaign to build a new art gallery on campus that will
open in the coming months.

Rogers’ current work focuses on the interactions
between art, science and technology, which is often
manifest in computer-controlled installations of kinetic
objects. For many years he has been working on a project
titled ODYSSSETRON—A Cybernautical Metamodel. This four-
phase project is designed to culminate in a robotic
circumnavigation of the earth.

“Prof. Rogers’ creative work, his demonstrated
leadership in instituting new programs and curricula, and
the remarkable breadth of his interests position him to
guide the School of Art and Design as it connects to a wide
variety of creative and scholarly pursuits within and
beyond our campus,” said Cantor.

“This should be a new era for the School of Art and
Design, and Bryan Rogers is the perfect leader,” Bollinger
said.

The opportunity to work together with the faculty and
staff of the School of Art and Design, almost all of whom
he has met, is what eventually attracted Rogers to his new
post. “Initially, the pull was non-specific,” he said,
“probably related to the powerful external mystique of the
University and the Ann Arbor community. After a couple of
visits, I began to feel the sense of human commitment to
the University by the School of Art and Design’s faculty
and staff. Following the visits, I found myself thinking
of wonderful possibilities.”

Rogers said the School has many strengths, some yet
untapped. “The obvious and essential strengths are the
excellence and commitment of the faculty and staff and the
high caliber of the students.”

Rogers holds a B.E. from Yale University and an M.S.
and Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley, all
in chemical engineering. He also holds an M.A. in art
the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich.

He was editor of Leonardo in 1982-85, and his essays
and reviews of his work have been published in Leonardo,
Art/Cognition, Sculpture, The Japan Times, Artforum, The
Los Angeles Times, and the San Francisco Chronicle. He has
received fellowships and grants from the Deutscher
Academischer Austausdienst (DAAD), the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology’s Center for Advanced Visual
Studies, the National Endowment for the Arts, the National
Science Foundation, and quite recently from NASA and
Microsoft Corp..

Prior to joining Carnegie Mellon, Rogers was professor
of art and coordinator/founder of the Conceptual Design
Program at San Francisco State University. He has lectured
in France and Japan and served as an external consultant
for art programs at the Georgia Institute of Technology,
Oberlin College, and Stanford University.