Gage Baxter is an arts management professional currently serving as the Director of External Affairs for the new $183M Fisher Center at Belmont University in Nashville, TN.

The new 150,000 sq. ft. performing arts center contains a 1,727-seat European style performance hall, two multipurpose ballrooms, ample rehearsal space and impressive technical capabilities. As part of the center’s leadership team, Gage is a key external-facing ambassador for the venue, spearheading marketing, development, and patron experience efforts as well as select programming initiatives. Since its opening in December 2021, the Fisher Center has seen superstars such as Garth Brooks, Brad Paisley, Carrie Underwood, Chris Stapleton, Vince Gill, and Sting grace the stage. The venue has also hosted numerous TV tapings including the nationally broadcast CMT Giants and Christmas at Belmont on PBS.

Upon joining Belmont in 2019, Gage led the Fisher Center’s inaugural capital campaign while also raising major gifts for Belmont University’s College of Music and Performing Arts.  

Prior to Belmont, Gage spent four years in performing arts development roles in Charleston, SC. He served on the opening team for the new $142M Charleston Gaillard Center where he was responsible for securing major annual and multi-year individual and corporate gifts. Prior to that, he worked for Spoleto Festival USA in ticketing and donor relations.

Bill became a member of Pi Kappa Phi fraternity, but thought the fraternity house they rented lacked the quality that was appropriate. He recruited his father, an attorney, and also the president of a Charleston bank who was the father of a girl student at the College. After gaining permission from the national office of the fraternity, the two fathers helped the fraternity to buy a much better house at the edge of campus and the first house owned by a fraternity or a sorority at the College.

Bill also was on the College's tennis team, playing in Charleston and around the state. He was also elected as president of the student body as well as the leader of the college's chapter of the Pi Kappa Phi fraternity.

After Bill graduated in 1965, he was asked by Dr. Freeman to be his voluntary lab assistant for the summer Icthiology class that Bill had taken after his junior year. That was one of the most enjoyable classes he experienced. Bill also helped Dr. Freeman contribute to a biological display that was under development by the Charleston Museum.

In Bill's senior year he applied and competed for a science fellowship from the National Science Foundation for his freshman year in graduate school. He was surprised when he was informed that he was successful in that competition. Simultaneously Bill had applied to be a graduate student at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The latter offered more support, so Bill wrote a letter of acceptance to UNC and thanked the NSF for their consideration. After 6 weeks at UNC, Bill had not received the support that was offered him and that he had accepted. The Dean of the Graduate College told Bill that he had not sent a letter of acceptance in spite of Bill's showing a copy of the letter to the Dean. As a result Bill had to find a place to stay and figure out how to obtain food. Bill's graduate professor hired Bill to work which was normally an undergraduate student job to help with the professor's research. Bill sometimes would walk through the school's cafeteria searching for uneaten food. Also, after folk dancing in Chapel Hill on Wednesday evening, Bill would visit the Rathskeller across the street and look for any pizza slices not eaten. One evening he noticed a girl named Birgitta sitting with folk dancers at the last table in the basement dining room. Birgitta had been a research assistant for a doctor working on viruses at Mass General Hospital. She agreed to continue to work on the doctor's research team when he took a new job continuing that research at Duke University Hospital. What good luck was that for them both!!

After graduation from the College of Charleston, Bill was offered a job at Northern Arizona University in the Biology Department with a specific requirement of teaching "quantitative biology" to the graduate students. That included applying statistical analysis to research activity and the use of computers in developing web classes in distance learning for students throughout Arizona as well as for students on campus. In the year 2000, Bill retired from NAU after six years as chairman of the Biology Department. Coincidentally, the citizens of Arizona had voted to support funds to prepare the state for the twenty-first century in nursing and dental hygiene. Bill helped faculty to develop the web courses that were used in accomplishing that job as well as web classes to meet other necessities. These various applications of computers in teaching resulted in 15 more years of his working at NAU.

In Bill's most recent contribution to the public, he has joined a small group of seniors leading hikes for other seniors in the vicinity of Flagstaff to keep them active as well as to provide information about the plants and animals along the many public trails in the city as well as in the forests and meadows outside the city limits. Keeping active is likely to make the senior years interesting as well as keep the hiking seniors informed and healthy.

The Francis Grimball Gaud Professor of Art Fund was established at the College of Charleston by William S. Gaud '65 in honor of his mother, who graduated in 1940 from the College, to promote the development of young artists from the Lowcountry region and the state of South Carolina.