The Cosby Show star Phylicia Rashad named as Howard University’s College of Fine Arts dean

Phylicia Rashad is going back to college, but this time she’ll be in a leadership role.

Howard University announced Wednesday that the 72-year-old Cosby Show star would be joining the the university as the dean of its College of Fine Arts.

It’s a homecoming for the actress, who graduated magna cum laude from Howard with a bachelor’s degree in fine arts in 1970.

Rashad is set to begin her role as the dean starting on July 1, according to the university.

‘In this full circle moment, Ms. Phylicia Rashad will take the training and skills that she honed as a student at Howard and exuded in an outstanding performing career, and she will share those pearls of wisdom with the next generation of students in the College of Fine Arts,’ said Provost Anthony K. Wutoh in a statement.

Howard University’s president, Dr. Wayne Frederick, also weighed in on Rashad joining the administration.

‘I can think of no individual better suited to take on this role than Ms. Phylicia Rashad,’ he said.

Rashad’s new position won’t be her first time working at Howard, as she previously served as a guest lecturer and had an adjunct faculty post that allowed her to teach master’s-level courses.

The Raisin In The Sun actress was a member of the Board of Trustees from 1996–1999, and she returned to serve from 2013–2016.

Rashad had a strong connection to the late Black Panther star Chadwick Boseman when he was a student at Howard.

She served as his mentor and even talked her friend Denzel Washington into paying for Chadwick and some of his fellow students to attend a summer theater program that they weren’t able to afford. 

‘It is a privilege to serve in this capacity and to work with the Howard University administration, faculty and students in reestablishing the College of Fine Arts,’ Rashad said in the announcement.

‘I would like to see the work that was established during my time blossom again with a new thrust,’ she added in an interview with The Washington Post. 

‘I would like to see a program contemporized without losing knowledge,’ she said, explaining her goals. ‘I would like to see faculty empowered to create and produce and design robust systems and a robust program. I would like to see students engaged in the disciplines of fine arts as they participate and engage in the university at large. I would like to see us graduate artists who are scholars as well.

‘And I would love to see us be a premiere program at the university. I would like to see the College of Fine Arts not only reestablished, but see it exulted,’ she added.

Her hiring comes as the College of Fine Arts once again becomes its own school, after becoming parts of the College of Arts and Sciences in the late 1990s as a cost-cutting move.

Howard is one of the United States’ premiere historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs), which primarily serve Black Americans. 

Rashad is best known for playing Claire Huxtable, the wife of Bill Cosby’s character on The Cosby Show, which earned her two Emmy nominations during its run.