About Pamela Fox

Born in Texas and reared in central Ohio, Pamela Fox started playing the piano at age 5. She went on to earn three degrees from the University of Cincinnati’s College Conservatory of Music: a bachelor’s in piano performance (summa cum laude), a master’s in music history, and a Ph.D. in musicology. She also has studied in Germany.

Dr. Fox began her career at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, north of Cincinnati, 20 years ago, joining the faculty as assistant professor of musicology. An active scholar and honored instructor, she became chair of the Department of Music and, for five years, was dean of the School of Fine Arts. The school — encompassing music, art, theatre, architecture, interior design, an accredited art museum and a renowned performing-arts series — has 1,000 students and 150 faculty members. Under Dr. Fox’s leadership, the school’s endowment and grants have risen dramatically, all departments have become nationally accredited, the diversity of faculty and students has increased, community service learning programs in Cincinnati’s Over-the-Rhine neighborhood and in Ghana have been established, and a $70-million center for the arts has been planned. One of Dr. Fox’s goals was to involve, meaningfully, Miami’s 16,000 students in the arts. She designed and has taught a course, “Experiencing the Arts,” taken by hundreds of students each year. An “Arts for All” program doubled student attendance at events.

In addition to her extensive and demanding academic duties, Dr. Fox played a key role in Miami’s continuing efforts to maintain and enhance its position as one of the top universities in the country. She served as the provost’s special assistant for strategic planning and as chair of a university-wide council developing ambitious goals to mark Miami’s bicentennial in 2009. Miami is a national leader among public universities that emphasize undergraduate education while providing significant graduate and research programs. In 2002, Dr. Fox was named assistant vice president of planning for Miami.

Dr. Fox has written widely about her research — on 18th-century composer Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, a son of Johann Sebastian Bach, and on music in Boston at the turn of the last century — and other topics. She also has presented scholarly papers throughout this country and abroad. After studying the evolution of C.P.E. Bach’s handwriting and the physical structure of his scores, she re-dated more than a quarter of his compositions and posed a new interpretation of his stylistic development. Her book, Sonatas from Manuscript Sources. C.P.E. Bach: The Collected Works, Series I. Volume 6.5, is being published by the Packard Humanities Institut in collaboration with the Bach-Archiv Leipzig and Harvard University. Through a second book, Cultural Counterpoint: Musical Life in Boston 1890-1920, Dr. Fox is recreating through oral histories and documents, a period when music “in tenements, Symphony Hall, and vaudeville” — written and performed by Bostonians of different ethnic groups and class origins — “resonated harmoniously.”

Dr. Fox is a member of professional organizations, including the Society for American Music, formerly chairing its national fundraising committee. She has been a consultant or examiner for the National Endowment for the Humanities and Yale University Press among others. She is married to Dan Layman, senior director of development in Miami University's Office of Development.

More information about Dr. Fox and MBC

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