SANTA ANA : Rancho Santiago Picks New Arts Dean

A theater arts director has been chosen as Rancho Santiago Community College District’s new dean of fine arts and performing arts.

Thom B. Hill was named by the district’s Board of Trustees at their meeting last Wednesday. Hill currently is dean of administrative and cultural services at Citrus College in Glendora.

“Thom brings to this position a wealth of experience as an arts administrator,” said Carter Doran, Rancho Santiago’s vice chancellor of academic affairs. “He combines the best of both worlds for RSC: strong fiscal management skills and an equally strong background in the creative processes of artistic instruction and production.”

Rancho Santiago’s Fine and Performing Arts division includes the fields of art, theater, dance, music, photography, speech communications, telecommunications and journalism. Hill will be responsible for curriculum planning and liaison with local arts organizations and the arts community, district officials said.

Hill, 43, whose annual salary will be $70,956, said his first priority would be to decide with the faculty in each field how their program should develop over the next decade.

Hill has a master’s degree in fine arts from Wayne State University in Detroit, and a bachelor’s degree in fine arts from the University of South Dakota. He was executive director of the Western Alliance of Arts Administrators from 1983 to 1988, and directed performing arts programs at Citrus College from 1974 to 1988. He has served as a guest artist and director with the South Dakota college’s Black Hills Playhouse.