O'Connor holds an MFA degree in Drama from the University of Southern California, and a BA in Theatre from California State University, Northridge. He is an unconventional thinker who works well with people with a startup mentality and who seek new ideas for our stages, screens, and headsets, and in our galleries, media and publications. He is interested in rethinking what we teach, how we teach it and who we teach it to.

Chuck served as the dean of the Hixson-Lied College of Fine and Performing Arts from 2012 to 2021. During Chuck’s tenure as dean, College enrollment gerw 10.8%, credit-hour production increased by 13.4%, the six-year graduation rate grew by 7.3%, and the College lead the University in diverse enrollments. The College’s endowments grew by $46 million.

Under Chuck's leadership, the College opened the Johnny Carson Center for Emerging Media Arts in 2019, a $57 million investment made possible by a $20 million gift to the College from the Johnny Carson Foundation. This new program, faculty and facility incentivize interdisciplinary approaches to story-making at the intersection of live performance, cinematic arts, mixed reality, experience design, sensory and interactive media, sonic art, data and artificial intelligence. Students are becoming well-versed in speculative and interactive design, systems and critical thinking, coding, entrepreneurship and social responsibility and will be an important talent pool for our state’s changing workforce.