June 05, 2018

The Board of Trustees of The Catholic University of America voted on June 5, 2018, to unite the departments of drama and art, previously in the School of Arts and Sciences, with the Benjamin T. Rome School of Music to create the new Benjamin T. Rome School of Music, Drama, and Art.

Over the past 50 years, the Benjamin T. Rome School of Music has been the only school of music in Washington, D.C. The new school will bring together all on-campus arts faculty to foster cross-disciplinary efforts and to anchor the University’s commitment to the arts.

In addition to the programs in drama and art, the school will continue to offer traditional conservatory-based performance degrees, the Bachelor of Music in orchestral instruments, voice, piano, and musical theatre, as well as undergraduate degrees in composition and music education (choral/general, instrumental, or combined). Master’s and doctoral degrees are available in orchestral instruments, voice, musicology, sacred music, and piano as well as graduate degrees in pedagogy of voice or piano.

Along with this news comes the appointment of Jacqueline Leary-Warsaw as the inaugural dean of the new school, effective Monday, June 18. Leary-Warsaw is an internationally recognized music educator and classical soprano and is also host of the popular television series “In Concert” on the EWTN Global Catholic Television Network.

Leary-Warsaw has been part of a decades-long collaboration with the University and the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception on production of the Annual Christmas Concert for Charity, and is a founding member of the University’s Catholic Arts Council.

She also previously served as chair of the Department of Music, artistic director of the Conservatory of Fine and Performing Arts, and associate professor of music at Birmingham-Southern College in Birmingham, Ala. Read more about the new dean.