Noting that it is not typical for an Overseer to be a musician, he said he hopes to use his new role to raise interest in the arts as a field of study and potential career path at Harvard.
“My hope—which is a dream—is that there will actually be a performing arts component to Gen Ed,” he said.
Chang has performed all over the world as a member of the Boston Chamber Music Society and is known for his collaborations with his old college friends Yo-Yo Ma ’76 and Richard J. Kogan ’77.
Both of the incoming leaders cited collaboration among Harvard’s schools as a priority for the Board, and by extension, the University.
“Harvard is a huge institution.... It’s just humongously spread out,” Chang said, calling interdisciplinary collaboration across Harvard’s schools a goal of many of its affiliates.
Oxtoby and Chang will succeed the Board’s current president and executive committee vice-chair, Carnegie Institution for Science president Richard A. Meserve and film producer Lucy Fisher ’71, respectively.
—Staff writer Nikita Kansra can be reached at nikitakansra@college.harvard.edu. Follow her on Twitter @NikitaKansra.