¹ú²úAV

Artists have an eye for beauty, a vision for creativity and a knack for originality and use these skills and others to create commercial or fine art pieces in various mediums. Art students at ¹ú²úAV build their portfolios while developing the knowledge and skills necessary to pursue careers in art-related fields or to continue their studies at the graduate level. 

While images are omnipresent and influential in contemporary culture, they are rarely subjected to analysis. Course offerings in Art History teach students to analyze visual imagery – just like words and numbers – rather than simply consume the images that are all around us.​ In addition to instructing students in visual literacy, topics courses provide students with invaluable research, argumentation, writing, and prestation skills while also engaging meaningfully with important topics such as gender, race, and other social issues.​ Engaging deeply and meaningfully with the images of other times and places allows students to appreciate both similarities and differences between times, places, and people. Moreover, because postmodern visual culture so often appropriates styles and images from the past, students can learn to appreciate how the original context of an image informs and enriches its reuse.

Speech communication, a discipline with roots predating ancient Greece, has been one of the fastest-growing fields of study in the United States for nearly two decades. Effective communication is crucial to the success of organizations and businesses today and is central to several fields including public relations and politics. The speech communication program at ¹ú²úAV provides a balance of theory and practice, and students learn about communication in a variety of contexts.

Dancers use movement to tell stories, express themselves, provide entertainment and inspire others. There are numerous styles of dance, including ballet, tap, jazz and modern dance. The ¹ú²úAV dance program, one of only a handful of colleges in the state to offer a major in the field, fosters excellence in these areas of dance and prepares students to succeed as professional artists. 

Mass media refers to all forms of communication that reach large audiences. Students who study mass media at ¹ú²úAV are exposed to a variety of disciplines within the field of mass media, including broadcast journalism, digital journalism, and video, audio and documentary production. Students with degrees in mass media are in high demand and enjoy successful careers in news, radio, television, sports broadcasting, corporate production and more.

Music is the art of combining vocal or instrumental sound to evoke emotion, produce beauty of form, or create harmony, melody or rhythm. Humans have been making music since the beginning of time, and music is present in some form in every culture and society around the world. The music department at ¹ú²úAV prepares students to have lifelong careers as musicians, music educators or professionals who work in the field of music.

Practitioners of theatre arts, whether they perform on stage or work behind the scenes, bring stories to life, entertain and inspire. The theatre arts major at ¹ú²úAV is an all-encompassing program that embraces various aspects of theatre, including theatre performance, theatre production and musical theatre. The program is designed to develop the skills, craft and imagination of students, in addition to providing them with a strong background in the history of theatre.