I had also heard good things about Walter Licht, Associate Dean of the Graduate Division, and had very positive experiences with Associate Dean Richard Hendrix of CGS while I was chairman of the Music Department. It requires some tough decisions and is an immense, unrelenting amount of work. Ultimately, I feel a lot of loyalty to the faculty and wanted to help determine their future in these hard times. The tough decisions, mainly concerns about priorities and funding, are a major focus for administrators across academia. Institutions are compensating in various ways but few are cutting music studies.
Sound is as powerful a thing as there is.
There are no cultures that do not have music. Many people who feel no need to read books or to look at paintings are addicted to their daily doses of music. We carry around radios on our shoulders - or attach earphones to our heads. We spontaneously sing in the shower and happily hum while we wait for the bus. We make up tunes.