University of the Arts has a new president: Kerry Walk has led a New York City college for 8 years

One of Kerry Walk’s earliest experiences as a leader and artist can be traced to first grade.

There was no cafeteria in her elementary school, so students brought lunch and ate in their classrooms, often unsupervised.

“We were out of control,” she recalled. “I was not very happy about how out of control. ... So I recruited honestly the ringleader of the chaos to work with me to write and direct plays, which we then used lunch time to perfect and rehearse and then we performed them for our teachers.”

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Over more than a half-century, Walk continued to nurture her passion for the arts and eventually her ability to lead. On Thursday, the Pittsburgh-area native, who is currently president of Marymount Manhattan College, a 1,625-student private school on New York City’s Upper East Side, was named the next president of the University of the Arts, beginning Aug. 1.

She will replace David Yager, who has led the school since 2016 and will retire in June.

Walk, a native of McKeesport in Western Pennsylvania, said she had long had her eye on University of the Arts, and she also was interested in working in Philadelphia.

“What I love about Philadelphia is that it is a world-class city, but small enough where everyone at a place like University of the Arts can make a difference, can have an impact,” said Walk, 62, who has worked for Harvard and Princeton and has spent the last eight years as president of Marymount. “That’s very, very exciting. It’s not as easy to do that in New York. It’s a much bigger place.”

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She said she will look to build even stronger connections between the city and the university as she shapes her priorities and vision, which will be collaborative.

“The vision has to be shared, or it won’t be a vision that is ever realized,” she said.

She described herself as “a listener first and a leader second.”

“I don’t think you can lead without having listened,” she said.

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She will enter the university at a challenging time, when many colleges are experiencing a dip in enrollment, and University of the Arts is no exception. The university currently enrolls 1,313 students, down from about 1,530 in 2020.

“What families are looking for quite rightly are outcomes, outcomes, outcomes,” she said. “What are our students doing when they graduate. If we can show families the outcomes of the education we provide, then that will drive up enrollment.”

The university, she said, also must look for new revenue streams and decrease dependence on tuition, currently $50,950 annually.

Labor issues also continue. The university’s educators formed a union in 2020, but have yet to get their first contract despite negotiations that have continued for more than two years. The university’s staff also formed a union in 2022, and negotiations continue there, as well.

Walk declined to comment on negotiations.

At Marymount, she helped to secure the largest gift in the school’s history, $25 million; established an office of equity, diversity, and inclusion; and opened a new residence hall in the East Village. The college has programs in dance, theater, and musical theater and a growing program in filmmaking and production, she said, adding that she spent a lot of time attending student performances and showcases.

She previously served as provost and later, interim president of Otis College of Art and Design in Los Angeles and associate dean of the faculty for academic administration at Pitzer College, also in California. For eight years, she served as director of the Princeton writing program and spent the previous eight years in various positions at Harvard.

She got her bachelor’s in English from Wellesley College and both her master’s and doctorate in English literature from the University of California-Berkeley.

Walk has already rented a place in Center City, where she will move with her wife, Maggie Browning, a retired emeritus professor of theoretical linguistics who previously worked at Princeton and Harvey Mudd College in California.

An avid scuba diver who has dived all over the world, Walk said she particularly enjoyed her experience in Iceland, where “you get to touch two continents.”

Her favorite playwright is Shakespeare, and she taught courses on Hamlet for years. Her office has been a home to student art, including a piece she commissioned, asking the young artist to “paint something that went with the office,” a very traditional space, “but also pushed against it.”

Walk plays the piano. Her favorite kind of music is classical.

“I really enjoy quartets,” she said. “Two violins, a viola, and a cello, and I’m very happy.”