College of The Arts

The mission of the KSU College of the Arts is to provide an outstanding arts education that prepares students to be locally and globally engaged artists, scholars, educators, and citizens. Towards this end, the College offers liberal arts and professional arts degrees that honor tradition alongside innovation, fuses theory and practice, and promotes integrity, discipline, arts advocacy, and leadership.

The College values vitality and significance alongside excellence in teaching and learning and promotes the arts as essential to individual growth and community building. These ideals inform all curricular and co-curricular programming and community collaborations.

The College of the Arts offers academic and professional programs of study that prepare students for careers in the visual and performing arts. Undergraduate programs are built upon a strong common liberal arts component. Through its departments, the college offers the Bachelor of Arts degrees in Music, Dance, and Theatre and Performance Studies, the Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Art, the Bachelor of Music degrees in Music Education, Performance, and the Bachelor of Science degree in Art Education.

The College of the Arts annually hosts a number of guest artists who provide students with rich professional training experiences. These artists appear as part of the major exhibitions in the Fine Arts Gallery, the Sturgis Library Gallery, and performances in the Premiere Series, the Musical Arts Series, and Theatre, Performance Studies, and Dance Mainstage and Studio Seasons. The College offers the Starlight Summer Series at the Legacy Gazebo Amphitheatre featuring local and international artists. These unique experiences provide exceptional opportunities for the College’s talented students.

Special units in the College of the Arts include:

The College of the Arts Box Office - services audience development, ticketing, and event information needs of the College of the Arts.

The Stillwell Theater - theatrical, musical, opera, and other university events are held in the University’s Stillwell Theater.

Chastain Pointe Dance Facility - a state-of-the-art studio that is fully equipped with a multifunction AV system, studio seating for 75 and a double-sprung professional quality marley floor.

The Dr. Bobbie Bailey and Family Performance Center - Built in 2007, the Bailey Performance Center boasts an acoustically superb 634-seat performance hall, the Eric and Gwendolyn Brooker Rehearsal Hall and the Don Russell Clayton Gallery. The Bailey Center presents the Premiere Series, the flagship concert series of the KSU College of the Arts, which consistently showcases the finest performers of our time.

Recreation Center Dance Studio - This dance studio theatre is used to offer dance classes on the main campus, as well as a performance venue for informal studio productions in dance.

The Performing Arts Library - this library serves the curricular needs of students and faculty in the School of Music and the Department of Theatre, Performance Studies, and Dance. The library houses musical scores, plays, sound recordings, video recordings, reference materials, historical music collections, other musicological materials as well as the theatre collection.

Visual Arts Resources Center - this facility houses an extensive collection of digital and analog images as well as periodicals and other print resources in art.

Technology Labs - the arts labs provide faculty and staff with state-of-the-art computer labs for artistic creation.

Art Galleries - the Visual Arts Department maintains three visual art galleries that show exhibitions of works by students, faculty, and alumni; works from COTA’s permanent collection of art; and nationally and internationally touring shows.

University Museum - the Clayton Art Gallery is home to an important collection of works by Athos Menaboni, and periodically hosts other exhibitions.

Accreditations

The School and departments in the College of the Arts are nationally accredited. In addition, the teacher education programs in the arts have state approval for K-12 teacher certification in Georgia. For full accreditation/approval information see academic department listings below.

Academic Departments

The College of the Arts houses three academic departments:

The School of Music (B.A., B.M.)
Department of Theatre, Performance Studies, and Dance (B.A.)
Department of Visual Arts (B.F.A., B.S.)

Minors

Art History
Dance
Music

Programs of Study

The College of the Arts offers the following undergraduate degrees:

Bachelor of Fine Arts in Art
Bachelor of Science in Art Education
Bachelor of Arts in Dance
Bachelor of Arts in Music
Bachelor of Music in Music Education
Bachelor of Music in Performance
Bachelor of Arts in Theatre and Performance Studies