The Fine Arts division of EC announced that Rick Christophersen has been appointed as the new director of the Center for the Arts Tuesday Feb. 3.

The hiring of Christophersen comes almost five months after his predecessor, Bruce Spain, retired from the position. Spain worked for EC close to 14 years before retirement, having felt the time to move on. According to Dean Fitzsimons, Spain has moved to Thailand since his retirement, taking the time to care after his tigers.

Christophersen comes from Chapman College, having been the Director of Administrative Operations before coming to EC. Fortunately for Christophersen, the duties of the director of the Center of the Arts are not much different from those of the Director of Administrative Operations.

According to Fitzsimons, these duties include the oversight of budgets, scheduling guest artists, ensemble performances, calendar events, preventing shows from conflicting with one another, managing the box office and front-of-house personnel in order to make sure everything goes well.

The hiring process was long and extensive in order to ensure the right person for the job, said Fitzsimons. First, it started with the college requesting for a replacement and, once approved, led to the announcement of the job being open for applicants. Once the applications started arriving, a hiring committee collectively reviewed the applicants and selected seven people for a screening interview.

Three of these applicants went on to interview in front of the final selection committee, which included the president of EC. Out of the three, Christophersen was selected.

Due to the fact that the Fine Arts division has been without a president since September, Christophersen’s start date for the job has been expedited. Christophersen will begin his job as the director of the Center for the Arts Monday, Feb. 9.

Update: The headline and several acronyms were changed. Attributions added.