Mission Statement

The Art Department provides our college community opportunities for understanding, appreciation, and participation in the arts and opportunities for developing creative, imaginative, and inventive thinking and problem solving. We offer a curriculum that provides:

• Understanding and appreciation of the fine and performing arts for students pursuing a general education degree.
• Prepares students for careers of further study in the areas of their expertise.
• Contributes specialized support courses for students in particular occupational programs
• Supports our college community with exposure to the arts.

To Achieve our Mission, We Will:

• Hire and maintain a faculty deeply versed in aesthetic, cultural, hermeneutic, historical, philosophical, psychological, semiotic, social, structural, and theoretical issues as well as in the specific techniques and performance practices of their chosen art(s).
• Constantly evaluate our program in order to keep abreast of current artistic and technical concerns.
• Support our institution's emphasis on cultural diversity.
• Provide the members of our academic community with satisfactory outlets for individual creative expressions.
• Put the fine and performing arts in the center of humanistic dialogue and inquiry.
• Offer student recitals and concerts, both on- and off-campus, have regular exhibitions of student work, develop an on-line gallery of visual, tactile, and sonic works, and stage innovative and demanding theatrical presentations.
• Situate more offerings from the fine and performing arts within the broader context of coordinated studies, co-sponsor gallery exhibitions with other departments and divisions, and seek campus-wide support for guest lecturers, artists, and performers, whose contributions to the arts make them true national treasures.
• Broaden our outreach to the community-at-large and seek more opportunities for student and community involvement.
• Stress the vital importance of the performance and exhibition of aesthetically significant works of the highest artistic quality and worth.