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Mission statement

The Art Department, housed in a comprehensive university dedicated to scholarship, research, and creative activity, educates students to perceive and construct meaning in Art through visual language. Their studies enable students to appreciate how visual grammar connects the artist with other human beings through common experiential bonds.

Our interdisciplinary approach provides critical and aesthetic constructs through which students can interpret and communicate the ongoing processes of self-recognition and cultural interaction. Toward this end, the art department learning environment will:

Provide opportunities for students to become aware of their own ideas and visual experiences.

Support and foster the infusion of cultural diversity and cross-cultural visual encounters to offer students the widest understanding of human artistic activities.

Develop student discipline, skills, and the spirit of inquiry necessary to manipulate materials in all studio endeavors.

Develop critical, theoretical, and conceptual abilities through studies of art history, art criticism and aesthetics.

Promote the skills and critical processes to enhance students’ ability to develop a constructive impact on future artistic and cultural endeavors and in their local communities.

Help maintain the students’ ability to respond both intuitively and analytically to their world through creation of art objects/events that demonstrate the integrity of human renewal and self-recognition.

Provide an active gallery and exhibition schedule of contemporary art objects/events for student use.

Support modes of artistic endeavors through a visiting artist program.