Faculty appointments 2024/25 academic year

Columbia University School of the Arts is delighted to welcome new faculty members to the 2024/25 academic year.

New full-time faculty members include:

Tory Bailey, Assistant Professor of Professional Practice, Theatre
Bailey served as executive director of the Theatre Development Fund for over 20 years. She is also renowned for her work on Triple Play, a project to increase audiences’ appetite for new and risky work, for a study of American playwrights that culminated in Outrageous Fortune: The Life and Times of the New American Play, and for her nearly 20-year association with Manhattan Theatre Club. She had served several terms on the Tony Awards Nominating Committee and received the Lucille Lortel Foundation Edith Oliver Service to Off Broadway Award in May 2023 as well as a Tony Honors in June 2023.

Elizabeth Kling, Lecturer in Discipline, Film
Kling is a NY/LA Editor and Producer working in the film and television industry. Most recently she was Executive Producer on the Netflix series Grand Army with Katie Cappiello and Joshua Donen. Currently Elizabeth is developing a series in London with Director Tricia Brock. Prior to joining Columbia, Kling taught at the Sundance Lab in Park City, and served as an Adjunct Professor of Editing for many years. 

Elizabeth Ramírez-Soto, Associate Professor, Film and Media Studies
Ramírez-Soto is a film and media historian whose areas of research include transnational cinema and television, feminist film histories, and documentary. Ramírez-Soto is interested in looking at the interconnections of political violence, forced migration, and transnational modes of production, focusing on Latin America. Ramírez-Soto is currently working on a book tentatively titled Transnational Experimental Television: The Global South on European Screens, for which she received a Summer Stipend from the National Endowment for the Humanities and a François Chevalier Fellowship from the Madrid Institute for Advanced Study and Casa de Velázquez. Before joining Columbia, Ramírez-Soto served as Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication and Media Studies at Fordham University and the School of Cinema at San Francisco State University.

Scott Whitehurst, Assistant Professor of Professional Practice, Theatre
As an actor, Whitehurst has extensive experience in Shakespeare and Classical Theatre. He has served as co-head of MFA Acting at The New School’s College of Performing Arts and has taught at other colleges, as well as at the NY Conservatory of Dramatic Arts, and Circle in the Square Theatre School. As a private teacher, Whitehurst runs The WhiteRobin Group with his wife, actor-singer Angela Robinson. Their clients work on and off-Broadway, in Regional Theatre, and in Film and Television.

Term-appointed faculty members include: Daphne Arthur, Keri Bertino, Jane Crager, Lars Horn, Celine Ipek, Adelia Khan, Hilary Leichter, Kenny Rivero, and Yasmine Seale. Read more about our new faculty members online.

About Columbia University School of the Arts
Columbia University School of the Arts is one of the leading arts schools in the world, a unique place where artists from every discipline come to study in their fields and to create together in one vibrant community. We award the Master of Fine Arts degree in Film, Theatre, Visual Arts, and Writing, as well as an interdisciplinary program in Sound Art that leads to an MFA in Visual Arts. The School also offers a Master of Arts degree in Film and Media Studies, as well as undergraduate majors and summer programs.

The School of the Arts recognizes Manhattan as part of the ancestral and traditional homeland of the Lenni-Lenape and Wappinger people. At the School of the Arts, we believe education and the arts are critical spaces to address issues of exclusion, erasure, and systemic discrimination.