Peter Witte

Since being appointed dean of the Conservatory of Music at University of the Pacific in 2017, Peter Witte has helped increase music major enrollment, retention and graduation rates through several student-serving innovations.

Witte is drawn to Pacific’s modern vision for music, one that celebrates cultural inclusivity while honoring nobler histories in music. 58% of music majors at Pacific identify as women and 55% identify as students of color, placing Pacific among the most inclusive music units in American higher education. Witte has helped appoint more than forty music faculty and staff since his arrival, increasing the number of music employees identifying as women of color 160%, the number of employees of color 155%, the number of women employed at the Conservatory 35% and the number of full-time music faculty 33%.

Witte’s article entitled "Performing Arts in the Next America" (Routledge, 2023) examines the ways America’s next generation students, artists and educators create and sustain more inclusive musical practices. In 2020, Witte helped Pacific’s Conservatory initiate a multi-year collaboration with the Institute for Composer Diversity to track the music that Pacific students and faculty study and perform annually. Since the launch of the partnership, performance of music of historically under-represented composers at Pacific increased from 26% to 46% of programmed works to date.

Witte also helps Pacific attract nationally prominent arts leaders for residencies, including MacArthur Fellow Tyshawn Sorey; 2024 National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Master Marilyn Crispell; composer Gabriela Lena Frank; Skywalker Sound’s Leslie Ann Jones; and Jane Chu, past-Chair of the National Endowment for the Arts. On the road, he has helped Pacific students and faculty present and perform domestically at Stanford, Jazz at Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall and for the National Opera Association and the College Band Directors National Association as well as throughout Europe.

In addition, Witte helped Pacific create a community music school; expand offerings in contemporary, hip hop, mariachi and metal music; create new hybrid graduate curricula in music therapy; renovate facilities; and add $3M in professional-level music technology, equipment and instruments for student use. Over the arc of his career, he has helped raise more than $66M in pledges and funding in support of arts education.

Before his arrival at Pacific, Witte held administrative and academic posts in Kansas City, Missouri and Atlanta, Georgia. Educated as a horn player and conductor, he began his university teaching career at Gettysburg College.

During his time in Atlanta, Witte helped plan and open the Bailey Performance Center at Kennesaw State University (KSU), now home to KSU’s School of Music. Hailed as "a beaut" by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Bailey hosts frequent performances by the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra.

An alumnus of the Atlanta Public Schools and of the University of Michigan, Witte serves as an advisor to the Presser Foundation, the Institute for Composer Diversity and as president of the board for the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players. From 2012 to 2022, he served as a member and then chair of the Commission on Accreditation for the National Association of Schools of Music.