Cecil Lytle has been a professor of music at the University of California San Diego (UCSD) since 1974. He was appointed provost of UCSD's Third College (now Thurgood Marshall College), and served in that position from 1988–2005.
As an internationally known pianist, he has recorded and performed avant garde, classical, and jazz works for the piano. Lytle has won six National Endowment for the Arts Awards, been a Distinguished Visiting Professor and Artist-in-Residence at the Darmstadt Music Festival and the Beijing Conservatory of Music, and was appointed Senior Fulbright-Hays Scholar to the United Kingdom.
In addition to his life as an artist, Lytle successfully led the initiative to establish a model charter school on the campus of UCSD, to attract and educate motivated low-income youth from surrounding communites. Professor Lytle continues to serve as the chair of the Board of Directors of Preuss School UCSD.