Meet the Dean!
Adrian Parr Zaretsky, PhD, is an internationally recognized philosopher, cultural thinker and creative practitioner. She is serving as a UNESCO Chair on Water and Human Settlements. She is the Dean of the College of Design at the University of Oregon and a Senior Fellow of DesignIntelligence. Prior to joining the University of Oregon, she served as the Dean of the College of Architecture, Planning and Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Arlington, and as the Director of the Taft Research Center at the University of Cincinnati.
She is the founding signatory of the Geneva Actions on Human Water Security. She has produced two award-winning documentaries, Thirsty and Drowning in America and The Intimate Realities of Water, directed in collaboration with Sean Hughes. Her video works, A Tale of Three Rocks and Watershed Urbanism have both received multiple honors at art film festivals in the US and Europe. Her creative works have been exhibited internationally, with recent art and architecture exhibitions featured in the European Cultural Center’s Venice Biennale. Her artistic works have been internationally and nationally reviewed and featured in design and news publications like Dezeen, Domus, and the Observer. Her latest publication, Earthlings, earned a silver award from the 2023 Nautilus Book Awards in the Ecology & Environment category.
She is a writer, public speaker, painter and filmmaker. She has published numerous books and articles and has been interviewed for her views on social and environmental justice by The New York Times, public radio and television. She has published op-eds in The LA Review of Books, The World Financial Review, and The European Magazine.
As governments, policy makers, and the courts worldwide struggle to redress environmental degradation and the harms experienced by vulnerable communities, Zaretsky looks to themes of equity, friendship, and generosity as starting points for change.
She argues in favor of creating social models premised upon open-minded, ecologically conscious, non-violent, and participatory ways of living. She maintains an inclusive emancipatory political imagination will help get us there.
Dynamic Leadership Values Grounded in Partnership
Parr Zaretsky's leadership philosophy is grounded in the belief that the College of Design thrives when leadership is not centralized in one role, but distributed across a community of partners (faculty, staff, students, and external collaborators) who share responsibility for shaping vision, culture, and outcomes. The following values reflect both how Parr Zaretsky leads and what is expected from those who join in this work.
1. Transparency as the Foundation of Shared Leadership
In creative and academic environments, trust is essential to risk-taking and innovation. College leadership are expected to practice transparency not simply as information-sharing, but as a commitment to shared understanding of priorities, constraints, and decision-making processes. In turn, Parr Zaretsky expects leadership partners to operate with the same openness, ensuring that trust is collective rather than hierarchical. Transparency is what makes genuine co-creation possible.
2. Feedback as a Practice of Collective Care and Creative Rigor
Parr Zaretsky views feedback as an act of respect, one that strengthens ideas, relationships, and outcomes. The dean expects a culture in which feedback flows in all directions: across roles, levels, and disciplines. Partnership means all are responsible for elevating the quality of the work and the experience of those engaged in it.
3. Engaging Constructively with Tension and Difference
The dean sees making space for divergent views as a natural and necessary part of institutional work. Parr Zaretsky strives to create conditions where differences can be surfaced early and engaged respectfully and productively, always anchored in kindness and shared purpose. This requires leadership that is willing to participate in difficult conversations, and colleagues who see themselves as co-owners of solutions rather than observers of decisions.
4. Evidence-Informed and Practice-Driven Decision-Making
Effective leadership requires balancing data, lived experience, and creative intuition. The dean relies on evidence to guide decisions, while also valuing the insights of those closest to the work, namely faculty, students, and community partners. Parr Zaretsky expects decision-making to be a shared intellectual practice, where analysis and interpretation are distributed across a community of partners rather than concentrated in a single office.
5. Building Structures That Sustain Shared Purpose Beyond Any One Leader
Parr Zaretsky's goal is not to be the center of leadership, but to help build systems, cultures, and capacities that endure and evolve over time. This includes developing distributed leadership, supporting emerging leaders, and designing processes that make collaboration the norm rather than the exception. True partnership means that the strength of the institution does not depend on any one individual, including the dean, but on the collective strength of the community.
Partnership as the Operating Principle
Across all of these values is a single guiding belief: leadership is inherently relational. The work is strongest when it is co-owned, co-created, and continuously refined through partnership. The dean's role is to help create the conditions where that partnership is not aspirational, but operational in how we work every day.