The School of Fine & Performing Arts comprises nationally accredited programs in Art Education, Art History, Art Studio, Music, and Theatre Arts. Approximately 100 full- and part-time faculty members – actively involved in creative work, performance, and independent scholarship – teach and train more than 700 student majors.
The School of Fine & Performing Arts is committed to providing a significant range of opportunities to research, study, create, produce, perform, and present ideas and issues of the arts, so that students can explore how aesthetic experiences offer particular insights and ways of communicating in and about the world.
Our students are challenged to attentively experience and critically engage different aesthetic experiences, to develop and improve communication skills including oral, written, and performative processes, and to relate and connect art to other fields, disciplines, and experiences.
Undergraduate studies prepare students for graduate work and employment in many dynamic cultural professions.
Graduate studies prepare students for college and university teaching and other professional careers in the arts.
Encouraging an expanding international perspective, the curriculum of the School includes studies in history and philosophy, theory and criticism, process and technique, and issues of the contemporary arts. Seeking a balance among practice, theory, research, and criticism, all areas of the School continue to integrate new technologies and computer applications in the study and production of the visual and performing arts.
The of the School are complemented throughout the year by public presentations, performances, and exhibitions of the Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art. National conferences and competitions, workshops and public lectures by distinguished visiting artists enrich the stimulating academic environment.
The School of Fine & Performing Arts' commitment to high-level academic programs and a generous range of special events supports a pedagogical mission of focus with flexibility. Our students live in a time of rapid change and transformation that requires intensity and agility. The School encourages students to study deeply and broadly and to develop a balance of conceptual and technical skills, so that they will have the background and capacity to imaginatively engage new ideas and possibilities.
