Andrew Davis is Founding Dean of the Kathrine G. McGovern College of the Arts at the University of Houston. His work there has focused on integrating interdisciplinary training into the curriculum and on establishing the arts as a leading force for social engagement and community impact. He is a strong advocate for the value of an arts and a liberal-arts education; the benefits of international study-abroad opportunities for students; and the opportunity for the arts to actively engage and transform universities and their cities. A music theorist by training and a long-time board member of the Texas Society for Music Theory, he has published and lectured widely on opera and instrumental music of the Romantic and late-Romantic periods. He is the author of Il Trittico, Turandot, and Puccini’s Late Style (Indiana University Press, 2010) and Sonata Fragments: Romantic Narratives in Chopin, Schumann, and Brahms (Indiana University Press, 2017).
Davis served previously as Director of the Moores School of Music and as Associate Dean of the Honors College, both at the University of Houston, and he was co-chair of the university-wide committee that brought a chapter of the honor society Phi Beta Kappa to the University of Houston. He was the recipient of a university-wide teaching excellence award in 2010; he is a co-founder and organizer of the Council of Texas Arts Deans; and in Houston he serves on the boards of the Phi Beta Kappa Alumni Association of Greater Houston, the Houston Symphony Orchestra, and the Houston Arts Alliance. He is President of the Board for Workshop Houston.
Davis holds the Ph.D. in music theory from Indiana University. He was appointed to the University of Houston faculty in 2003, and he holds the Cullen Foundation Endowed Chair.
