Drama Chair and Alumna Chosen to Lead UNC Faculty

Posted on April 24, 2009

McKay Coble ’79, professor of design and chair of the department of dramatic art, was elected chair of the faculty in the annual faculty elections that concluded April 20.

Coble, who also earned her master’s in fine arts from the University in 1981, has created sets and costumes for many PlayMakers Repertory Company plays as resident scenic and costume designer, including recently The Little Prince, The Glass Menagerie/Well, Amadeus, Pericles and Cyrano.

She currently co-chairs the Dance at Carolina task force and serves as a trustee of Chapel Hill’s Paul Green Foundation.

Coble was a 2006 Academic Leadership Fellow at the Institute for the Arts and Humanities and has held a number of leadership positions in her department and at the University level. She served the College of Arts and Sciences as a member of its administrative board from 2002 to 2005 and as chair of its division of fine arts from 2003 to 2006.

Currently, she is a member of the college’s Fixed Term Faculty Committee and the advisory board for the Program in Humanities and Human Values.

Coble started at Carolina in 1986 as a lecturer in the drama department. She has worked in various capacities in theaters in New York; Houston; Knoxville, Tenn.; Milwaukee; and Hartford, Conn.

Her three-year term will start July 1. She succeeds chemistry Professor Joe Templeton. Twenty-six percent of the faculty, or 925 individuals, voted in the election.

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