Visual and Performing Arts Department Mission

The Department of Visual and Performing Arts is a vibrant and active arts community consisting of a faculty of arts scholars and practitioners of national and international acclaim who are dedicated to advancing knowledge, promoting intellectual inquiry, encouraging life-long learning, and cultivating creativity in all students through teaching, research, scholarship, artistry, and public performance. 

Our students are inspired and challenged to uphold the arts, traditional and contemporary, in highest regard, to fully invest themselves in their education, to be actively involved in creative inquiry and risk-taking, and to effusively embrace creative innovations as vehicles for human transformation and cultural betterment. In addition, the department encourages all students to explore and develop a comprehensive understanding of the myriad of significant artistic contributions by African Americans and empower themselves to design a creative vision of their role in the arts within a technologically infused global environment.