The University of Vermont’s School of the Arts is home to an engaged, caring, and welcoming community of artists and scholars dedicated to creative innovation and a greater understanding of our interconnected world. It is the artistic hub of Vermont’s flagship public university and an accessible resource for the greater community. What follows is a set of strategic themes intended to chart a course forward for how we will serve our students, faculty, and staff.
Strategic Theme 1
We are a leading public institution for arts students, faculty, staff, and audiences.
The UVM School of the Arts is a leader in community engagement, creative risk-taking, research excellence, and arts administration through its strategic focus on cutting-edge curricula and cross-disciplinary work. Encompassing world-class public-facing resources like the Fleming Museum of Art and the Lane Series, as well as outstanding academic programs in Art and Art History, Music, and Theatre and Dance, the SoA functions collaboratively to form dynamic learning environments that encourage creativity and personal growth. Home to many of UVM’s most architecturally and historically significant buildings on campus, the SoA proudly nurtures a supportive, inclusive, and warm environment for its students, faculty, and staff. Opportunity abounds as graduates from the School become highly employable life-long learners, collaborators, and future guides to new ways of imagining.
Strategic Theme 2
We embrace our deep connections to Vermont while thinking globally.
Our programs engage with far-reaching questions like economic and environmental sustainability and how art can serve as a vehicle for social change. Our academic programs serve as incubators to train future artists, scholars, educators, and arts leaders who will contribute to the next generation of arts organizations in Vermont and beyond. The artistic seasons and exhibitions of the academic programs, the Fleming Museum, and the Lane Series all serve as lively educational resources for UVM students and as doorways for the wider community to experience timely art on campus. We commit to achieving this goal by actively cultivating local partnerships and constituencies and fostering global perspectives through our curriculum and public-facing programs.
Strategic Theme 3
We see diversity, equity, access, and inclusion as essential to the practice and study of the arts.
We seek to challenge historical exclusionary practices by embracing a robust variety of perspectives and methodological approaches in the arts. We are committed to an environment in which all students, faculty, staff, and audiences feel consistently welcome, invited to participate, and celebrated. We see art as a fundamental way to build
meaningful and mutually beneficial connections between our programs and the diverse array of art-makers and arts organizations in the wider community. We commit to achieving this goal by investing in inclusive and equity-based curricula, hiring practices, artist/scholar residencies, exhibitions, lectures, and performances. Further, we commit to increasing accessibility by reducing social, physical, and economic barriers to participation in our programming.
Strategic Theme 4
We enthusiastically embrace the liberal arts model of education as a significant learning advantage for our students.
Our programs in Art and Art History, Music, and Theatre and Dance and our affiliate programs are all thoughtfully built on a liberal arts model that encourages students to follow their own creative paths. Our courses are taught by accomplished faculty, often featuring small classes, experiential learning, teamwork/creative problem solving, and integrative and creative thinking. Our students are trained across various fields of study and learn to contextualize and understand the world through the arts. The School of the Arts is a community of makers and thinkers who discover themselves through art, find artistic collaborators, and form lifelong friendships. We commit to achieving this goal through rigorous training, a flexible curriculum, and a strong focus on career preparation no matter what students’ professional paths may be.
Strategic Theme 5
Our faculty are noted experts and innovators in their fields.
In the UVM School of the Arts, our outstanding faculty are artists, creative professionals, and researchers in a diverse range of fields. The SoA faculty are made up of historians, theorists, performers, curators, composers, conductors, choreographers, directors, and designers—a dynamic cohort of humanist educators and art-makers who balance traditional and innovative practices. This mix of specialties encourages interdisciplinary collaborations across and beyond individual art-forms and research areas. We commit to achieving this goal by supporting current faculty by increasing funding for research and creative projects and by attracting new faculty with focused research and creative agendas who will help foster a shared culture of exploration.
Strategic Theme 6
Our facilities provide functional and social spaces that foster creativity and collaboration.
The School of the Arts provides students with studio, classroom, exhibition, and performance space, equipment, and staff expertise that enhance their learning and prepare them for careers in the arts. Our spaces and venues bolster students’ individual growth as artists and encourage their engagement with an array of visiting artists from diverse communities. We seek to expand access to the arts by opening more spaces for artistic exploration for the larger UVM community. We commit to achieving this goal through careful management of existing equipment and spaces and the active cultivation of new resources, exploring partnerships across campus, and developing innovative ways to use and inhabit our historic buildings.