Our interdisciplinary curriculum includes traditional and online courses that are rigorous and relevant, with small class sizes to support the development of each student’s creative voice. Art & Design faculty, celebrated for their individual accomplishments, are committed to teaching excellence and maintaining high standards in an engaging, supportive environment. Equipped with skills, sensitivity, and sensibility, our graduates are poised to become artists, entrepreneurs, educators, and citizens.
Together, the School of Art & Design with the School of Music, School of Theatre, School of Journalism and Mass Communications, and the College of Arts and Media, play an integral role on campus and in the community.
“The last few decades have belonged to a certain kind of person with a certain kind of mind–computer programmers who could crank code, lawyers who could craft contracts, MBAs who could crunch numbers. But the keys to the kingdom are changing hands. The future belongs to a very different kind of person with a very different kind of mind—creators and empathizers, pattern recognizers, and meaning makers. These people—artists, inventors, designers, storytellers, caregivers, consolers, big picture thinkers–will now reap society’s richest rewards and share its greatest joys.”
— Daniel H. Pink
A Whole New Mind: Moving from the Information Age to the Conceptual Age
Marshall School of Art & Design Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Statement
The School of Art & Design is committed to cultivating an inclusive community for students, staff, and faculty, and we undertake this task in multiple ways:
We support our students across axes of race, socio-economic class, gender identity, sexual orientation, neurodivergence, disability, age, national origin, and veteran or parenting status. We recognize that art history, mainstream critical discourse, and the institutional context for visual art have historically overlooked the contributions of women, people of color, and LGBTQ artists; we teach the creative work of these underrepresented groups as part of a broad array of art and artists while drawing on a diverse set of frameworks. We want all of our students to see themselves represented in artwork and also be exposed to art and ideas from a variety of backgrounds and viewpoints outside of their own subject positions.
In the School of Art & Design, we draw on the particular histories of the tri-state region and of Appalachia, with its diverse populations of Indigenous people, workers migrating for the railroad, mining and manufacturing industries, and its attendant rich heritage of labor struggle. We simultaneously recognize Appalachia’s strong traditions of place-making, especially via folk craft traditions of the region. We seek to be a part of the increasing awareness of the presence and contributions of Black, Brown and Indigenous people in Appalachia.
We are active in national critical analysis and debate around social justice issues. In particular, we take into consideration how visual art has sometimes worked to uphold oppression and inequality, and we embrace scholarship that sheds light on and counters these mechanisms of injustice. Visual art is a crucial site of interrogation, reflection, and experimentation, and we remain active in these critical conversations within our courses, gallery exhibitions, visiting artist program, conference participation, and scholarly and creative work.