Raquel Monroe, Ph.D., is the Dean of the Chadwick A. Boseman College of Fine Arts at Howard University. Before joining Howard, Monroe served as Associate Dean of Graduate Education and Academic Affairs, as well as Professor of Theatre and Dance in the College of Fine Arts at the University of Texas at Austin. At UT Austin, she managed a $9.1 million budget to support graduate education, research, and creative practice across 26 graduate programs serving approximately 400 students. She previously held leadership positions at Columbia College Chicago, including Director of Academic Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Academic Personnel, and Chair of the Faculty Senate. 

A visionary leader, Black performance theory scholar, and international performance artist, Monroe’s academic and creative work bridges resource stewardship with cultural impact. Her research and artistic practice engage African diasporic aesthetics and Black feminist performance praxis, with a focus on performance as a vehicle for social change. She has presented site-responsive work nationally and internationally with the Propelled Animals collective, receiving funding from the MAP Fund, the National Performance Network, and the Mid-Atlantic Arts Foundation USAI Grant. 

Monroe’s leadership has been marked by strategic growth, equity-driven faculty hiring, and the creation of innovative funding initiatives. At UT Austin, she launched the Community Engagement and Public Practice Seed Grant and the COFA Co-Sponsorship Grant, collectively providing $100,000 annually to seed interdisciplinary collaborations between faculty and local and global partners. These initiatives not only strengthened university-community partnerships but also expanded faculty success in securing external grants from organizations such as the Mellon Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the National Endowment for the Humanities. 

Her academic leadership also foregrounds community, mentorship, and well-being. She created the “Write and Be Well” series to provide dedicated space, time, and resources—including writing retreats and wellness support—for faculty and graduate students. She also organized monthly gatherings to connect graduate students across disciplines, demonstrating her commitment to fostering inclusive, interdisciplinary communities of scholars and artists. 

Over her career, Monroe has advanced the hiring and mentoring of diverse faculty and the development of interdisciplinary curricula. At UT Austin, she oversaw the Expanding Approaches in American Arts strategic initiative, which resulted in the recruitment of six new faculty whose work spans the African, Asian, Indigenous, and Latinx diasporas. At Columbia College Chicago, she developed policies that embedded diversity, equity, and inclusion in faculty search processes and tenure review criteria, contributing to a 12 percent increase in tenure-track faculty diversity.