J. Robert Wills has dedicated 12 years as dean to making the arts a critical component of education and an integral part of the community. During his tenure:
His dedication and inspiration have made the Herberger College a nationally recognized leader in the study and practice of fine arts and have brought enormous recognition to ASU and Arizona.
Anyone who has ever turned 40 will tell you it’s a time of great reflection. Forty bids us to fully claim our past, but also to look forward, dreaming and planning for what may come next.
In 2005, the college celebrated its 40th birthday with pride. While the arts have been a presence at ASU since its founding in 1885, only in the fall of 1964 did the university begin to gather them into a single college. Since then, of course, these arts programs have continued to grow in stature and to earn academic rankings that place them among the best in the nation.
As you read this report, you will learn about several accomplishments that illustrate how far the college has come, including a 2005 Herberger College graduate who was named one of the top 20 college students in America, another graduate who has become one of the most recognizable voices on television and a theatre professor who won a Kennedy Center award for outstanding teaching.
In addition, the string and orchestra departments were named the most exemplary of 28 programs around the country working to aid the national shortage of string teachers, and the college was inducted into an elite consortium of universities from Canada to Argentina devoted to the advancement and study of PanAmerican performative arts and activism.
None of these accomplishments, and the others you read about in the pages that follow, would be possible without the support and guidance of the many friends of the college. Thank you. As my tenure as dean comes to an end, I believe a new dean will find a college truly ready for the next steps in its growth toward ever greater excellence. I thank all—inside the college, inside the university and throughout the community—who have made my time here so rich and so rewarding.
Sincerely,
J. Robert Wills, Dean
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is established. By 2006, it will have grown to include partnerships at 46 sites, including ArtsBridge, a collaboration among 14 universities in the country partnering with public schools to provide quality K-12 arts education. 
The college is named The Katherine K. Herberger College of Fine Arts in recognition of Valley philanthropist Kax Herberger. Her $12 million was the largest personal gift given to the university at the time. Photo: Paolo Vescia. 
Kurt Weiser (art) is named college’s third Regents’ Professor.
Kurt Weiser, Continental Drift, 2005. 
Multi-million dollar gifts by Evelyn Smith and her family endow faculty positions and graduate fellowships throughout the college. Their generosity is recognized with the naming of the Evelyn Smith Music Theatre. The same year David Katzin gives $500,000 to name Katzin Concert Hall and provide endowed programming.
Art in America lists ASU Art Museum as the “single most impressive venue for contemporary art in Arizona.”
Doc Severinsen becomes the first artist to hold the Katherine K. Herberger Heritage Chair for Visiting Artists, followed by Gunther Schuller and the St. Lawrence String Quartet.
Mark Klett (art) is named the college’s fourth Regents’ Professor. 
ArtWalk, the first alumni art festival becomes an annual fixture of ASU Homecoming.
School of Art M.F.A. program leaps to 13th in the nation by U.S. News & World Report. Specialty areas also received special recognition: printmaking, ceramics, and photography.
School of Art begins a joint Ph.D. in art history and theory with the University of Arizona.
Graduate programs in Music, Art and Theatre are nationally ranked by U.S. News & World Report. 
Professional Connections Office, later to be called
Student Success, is established to aid students in gaining on-the-job experience and post-graduation placement.
The Office of Public Art is created to administer the college’s growing public arts program.
Luis Jimenez, Southwest Pieta, 1987.
The Ceramics Research Center, under the auspices of the ASU Art Museum, is created by the Board of Regents. 
Arts, Media and Engineering experiential media graduate program is created in conjunction with Fulton School of Engineering. 
motione premieres at ASU then debuts in Lincoln Center, garnering repeated coverage in The New York Times.
College initiates certificate program in Public Art.
Stanton Sears and Andrea Myklebust, Prickly/Prickly/Prickly/Prickly/Spiny, 2005.
College celebrates 40th anniversary.