CAC | Photo by Kelsie Tomlinson | The Wright State Guardian
Wright State announced three new liberal arts schools and respective chairs after the reorganization of the College of Liberal Arts caused a split in programming. Faculty members shared their hope for the new accommodations.
New school
The new school of Fine and Performing Arts was announced on March 22 via the School of Music’s official Twitter account.
“We are excited to announce a change for the arts at @wrightstate. Starting this fall the School of Music, Art Department and Department of Theater, Dance & Motion Pictures will be combined into the School of Fine and Performing Arts,” the tweet states.
This is one of three schools formed from the reorganization of the College of Liberal Arts.
The other two new schools were announced to faculty in an email sent from current COLA Dean Linda Caron.
Beginning August 1, 2022, Dr. Alpana Sharma will chair the School of Humanities and Cultural Studies, Dr. Laura Luehrmann will chair the School of Social Sciences and International Studies and Dr. Daniel Zehringer will chair the School of Fine and Performing Arts, according to the email.
All three chairs are current COLA faculty members.
Details
Aspiring chair Zehringer explained how the merger of the existing schools was necessary to increase interdisciplinary study and accommodate fewer faculty and staff.
According to Zehringer, multiple performing arts faculty members took retirement and voluntary separation agreements. No positions will be eliminated in the new school. However, there may be some staff changes to eliminate overlap in duties.
“From a staff standpoint, we will be having staff members from theater, music and art coming together hopefully in one place, and hopefully in doing that we can eliminate redundancy between jobs,” Zehringer said.
Additionally, for all COLA schools, a chair along with two associate chairs will be appointed to run the programs.
Zehringer also cautioned that a lot of changes within the new school would take time to implement. Courses for the programs have been chosen for the Fall.
Collaboration efforts
Due to the similarities in the arts programs, the creation of the School of Fine and Performing Arts also came from the faculty’s desire to work with one another on teaching coursework and putting on productions.
“I am excited by the prospects of it,” Joe Deer, artistic director and professor for theater, dance and motion pictures, said.
Deer described how the department of music and department of musical theater plans on collaborating on the fall production of “On The Town” and how more collaboration among the departments will create more opportunities for students.
The collaboration will begin in the Fall, but Zehringer explained that the majority of changes will be finalized within the coming years.
