Anthony M. Cummings Named Provost and Dean of the Faculty

Anthony M. Cummings, professor of music and co-director of Italian Studies at Tulane University, has been named provost and dean of the faculty at Lafayette.

The former dean of Tulane College and dean of admission at Princeton University, Cummings will assume the Lafayette post July 1. He succeeds June Schlueter, who has served as provost since 1993.

President Dan Weiss said, “I am delighted that Anthony Cummings will be Lafayette’s provost and dean of the faculty. His extensive experience and many notable accomplishments as an administrator, teacher, and scholar clearly mark him as a visionary, innovative leader with a deep understanding of and strong commitment to academic excellence in undergraduate education, serious scholarship, and the values of the Lafayette community.

“June Schlueter’s accomplishments during 13 years as provost have been instrumental in advancing Lafayette, and I am deeply grateful for these and for her invaluable guidance, advice, and friendship during my first year as president. June’s commitment to the College, to the faculty and students, and to enhancing the quality of The Lafayette Experience is exemplary,” Weiss said. Schlueter, who is also Charles A. Dana Professor of English, will begin the next phase of her career by taking a sabbatical leave.

A specialist in Italian Renaissance music, Cummings earned M.F.A. and Ph.D. degrees in historical musicology from Princeton University in 1975 and 1980, respectively. He did his undergraduate work at Williams College, earning a B.A. with majors in history and music in 1973 and gaining election to Phi Beta Kappa. He attended the Institute for Educational Management of Harvard University’s Graduate School of Education in 1985.

“I’m pleased and honored to be appointed provost and dean of the faculty at Lafayette. I have always had the highest regard for Lafayette as an institution, given that it enjoys an enviable reputation as one of the nation’s finest liberal arts colleges, and my meetings with trustees, administrators, faculty, staff, and students over the past several weeks only served to confirm my earlier very positive impressions,” Cummings said. “The College’s trustees are clearly devoted to ensuring and enhancing the College’s academic excellence. The administrative leadership impressed me greatly (in particular President Weiss), as did the faculty, staff, and students. The physical plant is in excellent condition, and the College is therefore poised to concentrate especially on academic programs and initiatives in this next phase of its history. I’m grateful for the opportunity to contribute in whatever way I can.”

Cummings served as dean of Tulane College from 1992-2002. Founded in 1847 as Tulane University’s original undergraduate division, Tulane College enrolls men pursuing the bachelor’s degree in the arts and sciences. It has a coordinate relationship with Newcomb College, the university’s liberal arts division for women; men and women attend classes together, taught by the Faculty of the Liberal Arts and Sciences.

As dean, Cummings defined and articulated the college’s educational mission, administered academic advising services, developed and administered co-curricular and student and alumni programs, and helped define the agenda for the faculty’s Curriculum Committee, among many other responsibilities. His major accomplishments included developing and implementing strategic plans, designing and developing new programmatic offerings for students – including internships, research under the tutelage of a faculty member, summer travel, and informal interactions among students and faculty – and establishing a new office to administer them, collaborating with Tulane’s undergraduate admission office to increase the number and quality of applicants and matriculants to the college, and spearheading successful fundraising efforts in support of facilities, endowment for financial aid, and unrestricted annual giving.

During his deanship Cummings was also an associate professor of music. As acting chair of the music department from 2000-02 he restructured departmental finances, reframed instructional offerings in musical performance, arranged for the construction of an electronic music library, facilitated an on-going restructuring of the undergraduate curriculum, and developed a comprehensive strategic plan for the department, among other accomplishments.

Following his deanship Cummings undertook research on literary societies and academies of 16th-century Florence, Italy, during a sabbatical leave. He returned to Tulane University in 2003 as associate professor of music and co-director of Italian Studies.

In 2004-05 he served as William L. Duren ’28 Professor, designing and implementing activities to foster innovative approaches to pedagogy and the teaching of atypical subject materials to undergraduates. He was promoted to professor of music in 2005. He is a visiting fellow at Princeton during the current academic year.

Cummings began his career as a lecturer in music at Princeton from 1979-83. He became Princeton’s dean of admission in 1983, following two years as senior admission officer. As admission dean, a post he held until 1988, he chaired the university’s undergraduate selection committee; wrote annual reports to the university’s president; met with policy advisory groups of trustees, faculty, and alumni and with Ivy Group admission deans and directors; and analyzed statistical information and wrote reports defining Princeton’s priorities in admissions and determining directions for the Office of Admission, among other responsibilities.

From 1988-90 he did research in Florence, first at Università degli Studi di Firenze, as a Fulbright Scholar, then at Villa I Tatti, Harvard’s Center for Italian Renaissance Studies, as a National Endowment for the Humanities and Robert Lehman Foundation Fellow.

In 1990 Cummings joined the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, where he served as a member of the program staff for two years before assuming the deanship at Tulane. At Mellon he conducted an analysis of issues pertaining to the functioning of research university libraries in the United States. Entitled “University Libraries and Scholarly Communication,” the report was published in 1993 by The Association of Research Libraries and reprinted in 1996 in the Journal of Library Administration.

Cummings’ latest book, forthcoming from the Royal Musical Association and Ashgate Publishing, sheds new light on the manuscript known as Manuscript Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, Magliabechiana XIX, 164–167. The book reveals Florentine musical taste during the crucial years that witnessed the emergence of the new secular genre known as the Italian madrigal.

Cummings is author of The Maecenas and the Madrigalist: Patrons, Patronage, and the Origins of the Italian Madrigal, published by the American Philosophical Society in 2004, and The Politicized Muse: Music for Medici Festivals, 1512-1537 (Princeton University Press, 1992). He is coeditor of Music in Renaissance Cities and Courts: Studies in Honor of Lewis Lockwood (Harmonie Park Press, 1996).

A completed book manuscript, entitled The Lion King: Pope Leo X, The Renaissance Papacy, and Music, is currently under consideration by university presses. Cummings is coeditor of monographs on New Orleans jazz musicians Sam Morgan, Kid Ory, and A.J. Piron that are forthcoming from the American Musicological Society. He has also authored numerous scholarly articles.

Cummings is a member of the American Musicological Society, the Renaissance Society of America, and the jury for the Rome Prize, presented by the American Academy in Rome. He is a former member of the board of trustees of Williams College, the College Entrance Examination Board, and National Association of College Admissions Counselors.