The College of Arts & Media Mission, Vision and Values

Mission

The College of Arts and Media (CAM) strives to be a diverse community of artists and scholars dedicated to professional achievement. Sharing a rigorous learning environment, students and faculty discover the synergy among the arts, technology and commerce as students prepare for professional careers through faculty mentorship and real world experience.

Vision

CAM aspires to become a nationally recognized leader whose teaching, learning, and research explores, influences, and reflects the arts and its intersection with technology and commerce.

Values

Integrity. The College is the home for honest, ethical, responsible, and trustworthy people.

Excellence. The College rewards those who achieve excellence and mastery; those who demonstrate a capacity to influence the field, not those who only seek fame or fortune.

Creativity. The College values originality, imagination, and inspiration.

Innovation. The College supports and encourages those who take risks responsibly, who bring new ideas into the discourse, and who challenge the dominant paradigm. Success, in the College’s view, comes from invention and change.

Critical Thinking. The College demands depth of concept and reflection, an understanding of context, and the mastery of written and oral communication of one’s ideas as important and equal to the making of one’s creative work.

Collegiality. This College is a community of civility and mutual respect: teacher-teacher, teacher-student, student-student, student-teacher, and our interactions with the staff, administration, and the community at large.

Diversity. The College strives to create a microcosm of the diverse cultural, national, racial, ethnic, sexual, physically and mentally able, political, economic, and ideological world within which we exist. We can do no less than strive for the day when “otherness” becomes a symbol of joy and curiosity rather than fear and mistrust.

Intellectual Freedom and Social Responsibility. The College is a place for Artist-Citizens and the Citizen-Artists. We believe and celebrate our right to speak and create freely as members of the academy within a great democracy. We acknowledge as equally important the inherent power of what artists do and how this work impacts other people, particularly children, and the College commits to using that power with integrity and in a spirit of collegiality.

Rigor/Discipline. The College demands hard work, long hours, a commitment to mastery of the skills necessary to be excellent, attention to organization and planning, and a respect for others who may suffer from our own lack of commitment, organization, or mastery.

Lifelong Learning. The College recognizes that our penultimate goal must be to create graduates who share our restlessness, who are not satisfied with what they know, who are insatiable and driven in their need to explore the boundary of what we think we know.