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Dan Gurskis is in his fourteenth year as dean of the College of the Arts at Montclair State University. During his time at Montclair, he has overseen consistent and substantial growth in enrollment, programs, facilities, partnerships, philanthropy, and volunteer leadership in the college. Previously, he was on the faculty of the Department of Film at Brooklyn College of the City University of New York, where he served as the department chair for seven years. For half of those, he was also a special advisor to the college president. In that capacity, his signature project was overseeing the ground-up development of the Barry R. Feirstein Graduate School of Cinema at Steiner Studios, conceived as rivaling the nation’s leading film schools while differing fundamentally in the access provided to a diverse population typical of CUNY.

Dan came to higher education in mid-career with nearly two decades of writing and producing experience in film, television, and theater. He has worked on projects for Columbia, Paramount, HBO, Showtime, Cinemax, RKO, and the USA Network with collaborators as varied as the director Nicolas Roeg and Monty Python’s Graham Chapman. For writing and producing a documentary on the actor James Stewart, he earned an Emmy Award, and he has been recognized as a Lifetime Member of the Writers Guild of America. The author of the popular screenwriting textbook The Short Screenplay, which is also available in a Chinese language edition, he has lectured worldwide on film topics.

Dan holds a Master of Fine Arts in Theatre Arts (concentration in playwriting) from Brandeis University. He received his undergraduate degree in the History of American Ideas from the University of Pennsylvania.