College Of Fine Arts And Communication
The College has some of the most high-visibility programs in the university and enjoys strong community support. Almost all of its programs have outgrown their current facilities, many of which are also outmoded and in need of renovation. The college recognizes as reasonable the suggestion of the Department of Music, Theater and Dance that it be divided into two separate units–music, and theater and dance–in order to best represent the academic strengths of each. The college has noted essential needs for increased faculty resources throughout its programs, among which five in particular have been cited as the strengths of the college and prioritized in terms of their need for enhancement.
Priority 1: Deaf Education Program. The program draws its particular strength and uniqueness from the inclusion of Audiology and Speech Language and Pathology in the same academic unit; its nationally recognized Doctor of Education in Deaf Education program; its ability to draw external funding; its strong involvement of faculty; its work in training Hispanic Deaf individuals (one of the few programs that does so); and from its leadership in research and graduate education on the Lamar University campus. As a special note, the Audiology program itself is nationally accredited and in the opinion of outside evaluators has the potential to be the most unique in the country by providing not only interaction with students with total or partial hearing loss but also in promoting an understanding of their culture, which differs significantly from hearing culture. The program recently received approval to award the newest Lamar University doctorate degree.
Priority 2: Theatre Program. Although this highly visible arts component seeks accreditation from the National Association of Schools of Theatre, that very accreditation agency has pointed out that Lamar’s current faculty is too small to meet the demands of instruction and production. Inadequate facilities present major problems, as does the inability to provide state-of-the-art equipment for productions. Built and intended only for concerts or auditorium speakers, the University Theater is not equipped for dramatic productions—that is, it has no wings or upper fly space for scenery or stage properties necessary to live dramatic performances, and no storage space—and it must vie for usage with all other disciplines on campus for major events such as concerts, speakers, conventions, and convocations.
Priority 3: Communication Program. Offering students a wide range of career possibilities, this program has the potential for becoming one of the largest on the Lamar campus. Its enrollments and increased degree of ethnic diversity over the past five years have outpaced the university’s growth in these areas. Nevertheless, the program continues to suffer severe limitations of classroom space, faculty offices, and qualified faculty. Like the problems reported by programs in the College of Arts and Sciences, especially English, modern languages and philosophy programs, the Communication program has been forced to rely on increasing numbers of adjunct faculty and overload teaching by full-time faculty to meet its teaching demands and also to seek classroom space outside its own facilities for well over 50 percent of its students. Not only must faculty carry over 40 pounds of equipment across campus to these borrowed (and mostly non-mediated) classrooms but they must also share or do without office space altogether. Finally, the program continues to experience a severe shortage of laboratory space to serve the needs of journalism, desktop publishing, TV and script writing, and film and video editing, all of which are essential to the training of its majors for the contemporary job market.
Priority 4: Art Program. The art program has diversity of faculty expertise, is renown outside the immediate area and state, houses one of the university’s endowed chairs (the Walles Chair in Visual and Performing Arts, held from its inception by internationally acclaimed photographer Keith Carter), and has demonstrated significant growth in student credit hours in recent years. It stands ready to secure accreditation by the National Association of Schools of Art and Design. However, it needs a faculty member in Art History as well as several studio faculty. The program needs ongoing problems with roof leaks, poor ventilation, and lack of space have created severe problems with the buildup of mold on equipment and in classrooms, with fumes from highly combustible materials, and with severe over-crowding of classroom space, lack of studio space to help recruit graduate students, and extremely cramped and/or lack of office space for faculty. Moreover, the Dishman Art Gallery, cited by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools as a major attribute to the Lamar campus, has no full-time gallery director but must rely on release-time faculty without appropriate artistic credentials for such a position. Although it has remained in heavy and continuous demand by numerous disciplines on campus for classroom space, on-campus conferences, guest speakers, lectures, literary readings, film series, receptions for on-campus and community groups, the Dishman Gallery has no operating budget for its maintenance.
Priority 5: Music Program. One of Lamar’s strong and reputable arts programs which has maintained its “Good Standing” accreditation with the National Association of Schools of Music, the music program has critical need for additional faculty, most especially for elementary music education, voice/opera, and strings instruction. Current facilities are outdated, overcrowded, and embarrassingly in need of repair. Ability to recruit is significantly impaired by both lack of sufficient, trained faculty and by facilities that do not measure up to even those of most high schools in the area.
Priority 6: Dance Program. Although the Dance program at Lamar has made much progress in recent years and although it is active in and enjoys strong support from the community, its faculty feel that the program, whose greatest potential is the training of dance educators, can remain active at its current level without large infusions of additional financial support. The program continues to rely on adjunct faculty, primarily from local dance studios. While this provides a positive link to the community dance programs, there are occasional concerns over stylistic bias. The greatest need for faculty is for a full-time ballet instructor to keep the program healthy over the next five years. The program needs adequate facilities and currently uses performance spaces not intended for dancers, dance recitals, and full-scale dance productions.
