Fostering Excellence in the Arts
A Strategic Plan
2006
Revised 5/10/07

[Full Strategic Plan in our website: http://www.arts.uci.edu]

TABLE OF CONTENTS

1. INTRODUCTION
1. The Strategic Planning Process
2. Mission and Vision
2. CONTEXT
1. Academic Organization
2. Interdisciplinary Programs
3. The Donald R. and Joan F. Beall Center for Art and Technology
4. Rankings and Reputation
5. Programmatic Excellence
1. Benchmarks of Quality
2. Our Strengths
3. Our Challenges
3. RESEARCH AGENDA
1. Current Areas of Excellence
2. New and Emerging Areas
4. EDUCATIONAL AGENDA
1. Current Degree Offerings
2. Academic Programs to be Enlarged or Strengthened
3. New Programs Anticipated
5. PEOPLE
1. Faculty
2. Students
3. Staff
6. SUPPORT SERVICES AND FACILITIES
1. Physical Aspects
2. Performance, Exhibition, and Research Spaces
3. Support Services
4. Other
7. CAMPUS LIFE
8. PUBLIC ROLE
1. Distinguishing Characteristics
2. The Arts Plaza
3. ArtsBridge and Creative Connections
9. FUNDRAISING

I. INTRODUCTION

1. Introduction — The Strategic Planning Process

Like other academic units in the University of California, Irvine, the Claire Trevor School of the Arts has experienced significant growth since 1995. The growth has provided many opportunities, including fresh interactions among new and existing faculty, the achievement of a critical mass of like-minded artists collaborating across disciplines, and the expansion and renewal of several facilities. Fostering Excellence in the Arts provides an evolving framework for enhancing the excellence of our arts programs and planning growth up to 2015.

The Claire Trevor School of the Arts provides a professional level of training in the traditional arts disciplines: dance, drama, music, and studio art, as well as opportunities in emerging fields that capitalize on digital and new media. Our alumni enjoy professional careers of distinction in these fields, populating well-known organizations like the Hubbard Street Dance Company, Chanticleer Men's Chorus, Cirque du Soleil, Broadway stages, and some of the best-known galleries in the United States. Among similar arts programs, our unique identity is shaped by intellectual and programmatic objectives that include excellence in traditional arts practice and research, innovation through technological advances, and interdisciplinary collaboration.

2. Mission and Vision

Mission

To provide students with creative and transformative skills by offering a solid foundation in both traditional and innovative approaches to art and culture.

Vision

The Claire Trevor School of the Arts relentlessly pursues artistic excellence in its classrooms, laboratories, studios, and stages. By providing a creative and supportive environment for the education of talented students, as well as a supportive atmosphere that nurtures creativity and collaboration among faculty and staff, the School will continue to produce distinctive artistry of the highest order, thus fulfilling our potential to be an exemplar of training for the 21st century arts professional.

The Claire Trevor School of the Arts is increasingly a powerful artistic and performance destination in Southern California. As we look at the next ten years, we anticipate greatly expanded audiences and high visibility for our events and public presentations.  The Beall Center for Art and Technology will increase its corporate partnerships and philanthropic support.  The Maya Lin-designed Arts Plaza will be a unique beacon of public art at UC Irvine and the School will play a major role in the cultural life of Orange County.

II. CONTEXT

1. Academic Organization

The Claire Trevor School of the Arts includes four distinct academic departments: Dance, Drama, Music, and Studio Art. Each department contains its own areas of specialization, providing curricula and creative work in the following fields:

Dance: The Dance Department provides a comprehensive dance education in all performance traditions, history, and criticism. The curriculum encourages students to create, perform, and study dance from historical, philosophical, and scientific perspectives.

Drama: The Drama Department combines broad liberal study as well as intensive training in performance and design. UCI offers full productions from around the world and features the university's talented company of student actors, designers, and production staff under the guidance of a renowned faculty.

Music: The Music Department's programs in instrumental or vocal performance training — combined with studies in music history, theory, composition, jazz, and electronic music — give students the necessary skills for both personal and practical success in the future.

Studio Art:  The Studio Art Department takes a wide-ranging, interdisciplinary approach to contemporary art, providing experiences in traditional and new genres, as well as performance art.

Both performance/artistic work and scholarly studies are valued and supported.  We believe in the seamless integration of critical thinking into applied arts.  Indeed, we set our focus on informed or intelligent artistic practice and thought.  For more information, visit our website: http://www.arts.uci.edu.

2. Interdisciplinary Programs

The School encourages and supports interdisciplinary collaboration at all levels. In addition to informal or opportunistic collaborations between faculty, there are currently three formal interdisciplinary programs:

a)   Arts-Humanities Major. In collaboration with the School of Humanities, this interdisciplinary major improves students' critical and historical sophistication through the process of performance and creative work. This combination equips students to participate more effectively in a society that increasingly joins critique and creation just as closely as it fuses image and information.

b)   Digital Arts Minor. This undergraduate minor prepares students for professions in businesses and industry in which an ability to integrate artistic vision with technological application is desired. The minor attracts students whose major fields of studies are in the Arts, Information and Computer Science, Engineering, Social Sciences, and other fields. Enrollment is currently capped at 500 students, with 300 students on the waiting list. Classes are offered in digital imaging, theater design, interactive digital media, sound and video, dance and music technology, and computer music composition.

c)   Master's Program in Arts Computation and Engineering (ACE). In collaboration with the Donald Bren School of Information and Computer Science and the Henry Samueli School of Engineering, the ACE program trains critically aware techno-cultural practitioners. We are planning to decommission this arts-based M.F.A. as an ACE-based M.A. is developed in the next two years and current M.F.A. students graduate.

For more information on these programs and departments, please visit our website:  http://www.arts.uci.edu.

3. The Donald R. and Joan F. Beall Center for Art and Technology

The Donald R. and Joan F. Beall Center for Art and Technology is a research and exhibition center that explores new relationships between the arts, sciences, and engineering, promoting new forms of creation and expression using digital technologies. Since 2000 the Beall Center has presented and commissioned works from established and emerging artists throughout the United States as well as UC Irvine faculty, encouraging interdisciplinary artistic exploration and experimentation in new technologies through a competitive research and exhibition grant program. The bulk of the Center's operations are funded through corporate, foundation, and individual donor support.

4. Rankings and Reputation

Our academic programs rank among the best nationally, as indicated somewhat erratically by popular guides but more dependably by other professional organization indicators.  Artistic disciplines are rarely included in popular national indicators of rankings:  U.S. News and World Report periodically includes one arts discipline or another and the Arco Guide to the Performing Arts is issued on an irregular basis.

Currently, our graduate programs in drama and the visual arts are ranked among the top 50 nationwide by U.S. News and World Report. Drama ranks 12th, and Studio Art 34th. The popular Arco Guide to the Performing Arts ranks collegiate programs in the performing arts and uses the following designations: Most Highly Recommended, Highly Recommended, and, Recommended. In the last ranking, now nearly ten years old, our drama program earned the "Most Highly Recommended" rating, and Dance earned "Highly Recommended".

Our music program is still small in size and not normally included in any ranking system. While the Music Department faced several challenges in 2001-2003, it is now enjoying stability and faculty growth. Five new faculty have been added since Fall 2004: two in voice, one theorist, and two musicologists (the latter an Associate Dean in the School and the Music Department Chair); a composer/theorist; and a Persian Music endowed professor. Both the Bachelor of Music and Master of Fine Arts in Music programs have been revised and strengthened in the last two years; and student recruitments have increased in both quantity and quality. A priority for the next ten years will be to continue on this path of growth and to achieve a national ranking.

The Studio Art MFA program was expanded into a three-year program in 2002, gaining depth and strength. The highly competitive Studio Art program has demonstrated success in the education of young artists who go on to exhibition careers, teaching, and arts-related positions. The addition of two new faculty in Fall 2005, including Distinguished Professor Yvonne Rainer, added yet another dimension of luster to an already stellar faculty.

The Drama undergraduate program consists of a comprehensive study of acting, directing, design, production, theory, criticism, and literature. The graduate MFA (in Acting, Directing, Stage Management, or Design--Costume, Stage, Sound, or Lighting) enjoys a reputation as one of the best nationally and the faculty is internationally celebrated. Designated a campus “Program of Excellence” in 2005, the department is adding two new faculty lines in Sound Design in order to inaugurate this new program.  The Ph.D. program, in collaboration with the University of California, San Diego, is now enjoying its first graduates.

The Dance program offers an array of professional training opportunities and an internationally renowned faculty, making it one of the most competitive programs in the United States. It has become so desirable that it is now the largest academic dance program in the U.S.  An ongoing program in collaboration with the Paris Conservatoire offers students international opportunities for unique performances and study in Europe. In addition, the Dance program incorporates training in the latest video dance, interactive space dance, and digital technologies — one of the few to do so in the United States.

SAT scores of entering Freshmen are indicators of limited value in undergraduate arts admissions since these scores do not measure artistic talent. A more adequate predictor of success in the arts is the extent and quality of pre-college training in the arts. In addition, two programs, Music and Dance, use auditions in the admissions process as a way of setting and keeping admissions standards high. Such audition processes are common in both peer institutions and aspirational peers throughout the U.S. The BA programs in Drama and Studio Art, by their comprehensive nature, do not rely on auditions. In all disciplines graduate admission is based on talent as demonstrated in successful audition or portfolio review. Master degree applicants are admitted on the basis of a competitive audition or portfolio review.

5. Programmatic Excellence
1. Benchmarks of Quality in Similar Academic Programs in the Arts

We have peers that differ from area to area.  These include:  NYU and Universty of Ohio (Dance); Yale and UCLA (Drama); Western Michigan and UCSD (Music) ;and CalArts and Rhode Island School of Design (Studio Art).

• Distinguished faculty who are nationally/internationally renowned
• Dynamic performance and exhibition programs
• Strong graduate programs
• Proven employability of students after graduation (in both professional and academic areas) and alumni success
• Strong critical theory and performance skills
• Practical experience opportunities for students (e.g., touring, professional experiences)
• Up-to-date facilities and equipment
• Curriculum that provides training relevant to practicing artists of the 21st century
2. Our Strengths
• Dynamic performance programs that feature talented faculty, students, guest artists, and our gifted staff.
• Faculty who are well-known in their fields and professionally active in the international arena, including four Claire Trevor Endowed Chairs, one endowed Maseeh Professor of Persian Performing Arts, one Chancellor’s Professor, and one Distinguished Professor.
• Vigorous and well-respected curricula in all disciplines.
• Excellent practical experience opportunities for students through formal programs that have been in place several years, such as Drama’s New York Satellite Program, Dance’s Paris Exchange, and Studio Art’s L.A. area collective MFA show.
• Dynamic exhibition/performance menu of technologically advanced arts shown in the Beall Center, the University Art Gallery, the Motion Capture Studio, and the Gassmann Music Center.
3. Our Challenges
• The University Art Gallery and Room Gallery present an excellent exhibition program of student art, but we currently lack both the room and the funding to present exhibits featuring guest artists.
• Emerging areas (e.g., Dance/Technology, Animation) and some high-demand established areas (e.g., Modern Dance) need additional faculty with stellar reputations.
• We suffer from an extremely serious shortage of space of all kinds: it is difficult to identify office space for any new faculty; stages are fully booked all year; the Gallery experiences calendar restrictions against its hopes of presenting professional exhibitions; and classrooms are precious few and in need of serious updating.

III. RESEARCH AGENDA

1. Current Areas of Excellence
• Dance:  Ballet and Modern Dance enjoy a strong international reputation. Dance is unique for its stellar faculty and the professional placement of its graduates.
• Drama: Drama is uniformly strong in acting, directing, design (scenic, costume, and lighting), and stage management.
• Music: Music excels in Composition, Jazz, Voice, and Musicology and Critical Studies.
• Studio Art: This department is dedicated to articulating contemporary culture issues through artistic practice, and excels in critical and cultural studies, performance, and digital media.
2. New and Emerging Areas
• Dance: The emerging program in dance and digital technologies is unique and will continue to expand, necessitating additional faculty and resources.
• Drama: Sound Design is a new and unique area of expertise that is developing with the hire of a senior faculty member (Fall 2006) and that of an additional faculty member (Fall 2007).
• Music: A new direction in ethnomusicology, led by the arrival of the first Maseeh Professor in Persian Performing Arts (Fall 2006).
• Studio Art: Digital media areas will continue to see expansion. Particularly needed is the area of animation.
• Ethnic cultural studies and practice across disciplines:  The Persian performing arts presence in Music is symptomatic of a much wider and deeper interest the School is developing in African American dance and music and multi-cultural traditions in theater (particularly Asian theater).

IV. EDUCATIONAL AGENDA

1. Current Degree Offerings

Our degree offerings are as varied as would be expected of a major university. Undergraduate programs are coupled with the standard terminal program in the arts, the Master of Fine Arts, as well as a doctoral degree program in critical studies:

B.A. in Dance, Drama, Music, Studio Art, and Arts and Humanities
B.F.A. in Dance with specialization in Performance or Choreography
B.Mus. in Music Performance
M.F.A. in Dance, Drama, Music, and Studio Art
M.F.A. in Arts Computation Engineering
Ph.D. in Drama and Theater

2. Academic Programs to be Enlarged or Strengthened

Dance

1. Continued growth of Dance/technology component, an area in which UC Irvine provides national leadership in conjunction with NYU.
2. New production training component: dance costume design to enhance the training of dance professionalss.
3. Revised MFA to provide areas of emphasis in choreography, technology, and reconstruction.
4. An outgrowth of the jazz dance area, African and African-American dance traditions.

Drama

1. The current PhD program in drama critical theory has begun to produce its first graduates.  We hope it will now attract a larger number of students.
2. Increase in graduate enrollments.

Music

1. Strengthened BMus program: implementation of revised curriculum.
2. Revision of BA program to achieve clearer focus and to be made more attractive to students seeking a double major.
3. Revision of MFA curriculum in order to streamline some requirements and strengthen others.

Studio Art

Planned gradual enrollment growth in the MFA program.

Digital Arts Minor

A 2006 revision of this popular minor has added more minor-specific courses and strengthened the program.

3. New Programs Anticipated

In order to remain competitive, the Claire Trevor School of the Arts anticipates several new programs in response to the needs of artists and society in the 21st century.

New Programs:	By:
Undergraduate         • BFA in Musical Theatre         • Concentration in Dynamic Imaging and Design     Graduate         • MFA in Sound Design (Drama)         • MFA in Critical and Curatorial Studies (Studio Art)             • Doctoral degree in Music (DMA or PhD)	2008 2009 2006 2008 2011

Under Consideration:
MFAs, MAs, or certificates in Dramaturgy and Theatrical Production  and an undergraduate concentration in Arts Management in conjunction with the Paul Merage School of Business.

V. PEOPLE

1. Faculty

All programs will need additional faculty lines in the next ten years.  Anticipated and expanded programs in new media arts, curatorial studies, ethnic music and dance, and others will also need an infusion of new faculty lines. In the first few years of the period covered by this plan, several new faculty lines will be essential for the achievement of a new level of excellence by 2010:

• Dance: Modern Dance, Costume Design, and African-American Dance
• Drama: Musical Theatre and Stage Direction
• Music: Music Theory, Jazz Performance/Composition, Brass, Woodwinds, Ethnomusicology
• Studio Art: Animation, Sculpture
2. Students

Enrollment is approximately 1100 majors (10% of which are graduate level) and 500 minors (in the Digital Arts Minor program). Anticipated growth of the college-bound population and UC Irvine desirability factors, indicates that, by 2015, we will have approximately 1450 majors and 600 minors.

More importantly, a rebalancing of undergraduate and graduate enrollment will be necessary in the next ten years as part of our planned growth. Therefore, the current percentage (10%) of graduate students is planned to increase to 14% by 2010, reaching capacity enrollment of 20% of the total enrollment by 2015. While in scientific fields graduate students are often funded as part of research grants, such sources of funding are rare in the arts. Therefore, in order to achieve this goal, it will be necessary for the School to develop new sources of funding for endowed fellowships.

3. Staff

The increase of performances and exhibitions, and the appropriate support of research and creative activities in the School will necessitate the growth of specialized staff. Currently, the production staff in Music, Dance, and Drama are stretched exceedingly thin. Indeed, additional specialized positions in Audio Design, Costume Production, and Stage Production are high priorities.

Across disciplines, technology support positions are crucial to the success of our role in the 21st century. In addition to the information technology staff to support increased usage of technology by all members of the school community, specialized positions will be needed to support cutting edge new media production in the arts. Such technically informed support is crucial in new media creative practice across all the disciplines.

VI. SUPPORT SERVICES AND FACILITIES

1. Physical Aspects

The quality of facilities not only provide a visual identity and hold a prominent footprint in the university but facilitate meaningful research, education, and performance for faculty and students. As we plan future growth, we will seek to provide physical aspects to our buildings and approaches to them that convey a feeling of welcome, quality, and endurance.

2. Performance, Exhibition, and Research Spaces

In the next ten years, we will need new, technology-laden spaces for performance, exhibition, and research. A new, technology-intensive building will open in 2011, including a technologically advanced and reconfigurable rehearsal space; a specialized presentation space - a more theatrical version of the Beall Center to support dramatic and musical presentations of an experimental nature with many technological features; and a new gallery to hold professional exhibits for the community and provide a laboratory for curatorial students.

Other needs not covered by this plan: additional "smart" classrooms, faculty offices, and expanded sculpture facilities.

3. Support Services

Support services within the School are already strained. Technology support is a concern as are production personnel and services. Among the areas of great concern:

• Software and hardware in the labs and classrooms needs to be refreshed on a regular basis in order to be of any relevance to teaching.
• The School’s Visual Resource Center, a shared facility with Humanities, us a discipline-specific repository of visual materials that is used extensively in teaching and research,. It is already facing the conversion to a digitized collection that is searchable and accessible online.
• The Music and Media Center is facing pressures to provide streaming audio for classes on a regular basis.
• “Smart classrooms” are becoming the near-standard way to teach and the School urgently needs to develop the resources to convert current classrooms.
4. Other

Reaching out to the community, we have developed a collaboration with the Orange County Museum of Art (OCMA) which will, in the next two years, result in our ability to take arts/technology presentations to The Orange Lounge, OCMA's new digital gallery in South Coast Plaza. Currently, the first part of the collaboration is already evident in the curatorial internships that the Beall Center and OCMA share and rotate.

The School will also pursue the establishment of a satellite art gallery in Orange County and/or the Los Angeles area. Possible locations in Orange County are the future Great Park, Santa Ana, and Costa Mesa. The Los Angeles area is highly desirable because careers are made in that artistic environment. The overhead costs of a satellite gallery may be partly supported by collaborative agreements with institutions or city governments, but will surely entail operating costs.

VII. CAMPUS LIFE

Access to campus facilities are useful in generating goodwill with the outside community and they provide a modest fund to help with the upkeep of those facilities. However, access needs to be carefully controlled and managed to protect facilities and to guarantee their use first and foremost for academic and creative activities of the faculty and students. For the most part, the School limits the rental of facilities to the summer months in order not to interfere with our primary functions.

UC Irvine would almost certainly profit by a serious re-examination of the ongoing agreement with the Irvine Barclay Theater. As a facility co-owned by UCI and the City of Irvine, the IBT should provide a thriving, more accessible venue for UCIArts productions.  We can only hope that, once the City opens a new amphitheater in the Great Park, UC Irvine might buy out the other partners and bring the IBT fully to the campus.

The Cyber-A Café should be open and fully staffed on weekends and during campus productions in order to create a real sense of a living arts community and to attract the public to this side of the bridge. Negotiations with the management overseeing the Cyber-A have only produced partial improvements in the service to date

VIII. PUBLIC ROLE

1. Distinguishing Characteristics

Our menu of performances and exhibitions allows us to function as a rich cultural resource in Orange County. The diversity and excellence of our art gallery exhibitions and performances in music, dance, and drama are unequaled among universities in the area. In addition, we partner with local arts organizations in a variety of ways:  we offer our spaces during the summer at either free or dramatically reduced rentals to programs like the Pacific Symphony’s Arts-x-Press and Opera Pacifc’s Summer Opera program.  We partner with the Orange County Museum of Art in a joint docent training program, and we partner with Orange Lounge to present joint exhibits.

2. The Arts Plaza

Maya Lin, one of the world's most distinguished artists, created a unique design in the heart of the School’s Arts Plaza. This public art space, dedicated in Fall 2005, provides open public access to the arts through a continually changing "outdoor museum" that, appropriately for Orange County, showcases the talents of our faculty and students, as well as those of guest artists. Maya Lin's design has brought UC Irvine and Orange County increased national visibility level and it demonstrates to the world our commitment to artistic training of the highest caliber, global awareness, and technological achievement in the arts.

3. ArtsBridge and Creative Connections

UC Irvine was the cradle of ArtsBridge, a K-6 outreach program. ArtsBridge provides scholarships for selected students in the Claire Trevor School of the Arts who share their particular art form with K-6 students in the surrounding region. In an era of limited arts education at the elementary level, the ArtsBridge program provides children with exposure to creativity through the arts and meaningful contact with our artists-in-training. For our university students, the ArtsBridge program provides in-service training as arts educators of the future, an excellent model for sharing their expertise, and an important experience in community service and volunteerism.

There are other excellent outreach programs at UC Irvine, e.g., H.O.T., Cosmos, etc.  The goals of arts-specific outreach is unique, so our connections with other outreach programs on campus has been limited.

As we look to the future, a new, more comprehensive outreach initiative is expected to debut in Fall 2007:  Creative Connections.  Creative Connections will be the umbrella for a more varied set of outreach efforts, including the next generation of the ArtsBridge model, a program to help high schools satisfy the Arts requirement, and an artists/musicians master class program in the schools.

IX. FUNDRAISING

The support of the Bren Foundation and several family foundations, as well as many individual, corporate, and business donors is invaluable. The Donald R. and Joan F. Beall Center for Art and Technology is largely funded through the generosity of many local corporations and foundations.  While the Claire Trevor School of the Arts is fortunate to have the generous support of many individuals, foundations, and corporations, the need for fundraising will only increase in the near future.

Fundraising priorities for the next ten years include:  endowed scholarships and fellowships; several endowed faculty chairs; exhibition and production support; and technology improvements.

The School enjoys the widespread support and expertise of the Dean's Leadership Council. In addition, the Drama Department has a group of dedicated volunteers that form the Theatre Guild and support the production of plays and musical theatre. The other departments do not currently have community advisory groups, but two enjoy the dedication of several community "angels" who are passionate about Music and Dance.  Developing a vigorous community presence will be necessary for Studio Art to fulfill its hopes and needs for exhibition support and student scholarships.

For more details, please see the complete strategic plan on our website: http://www.arts.uci.edu/article.php?a_id=1043&nav=26

University of California, Irvine • Irvine, CA 92697
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All Rights Reserved.

Last Updated: June 27, 2007