From Dean Brook Muller
The arts and design have a significant role to play in igniting the civic imagination, finding meaning, telling the truth, touching our emotions, challenging our assumptions, and ushering in positive change. As a college in a university with an urban research mission, the CoA+A is dedicated to working toward an anti-racist society while providing perspectives on the challenges and injustices of our current moment.
With this commitment in mind, we pursue a better understanding of the past. One prevalent view of American history reads like a checklist in a steady march of progress. There are other histories that are deeply troubling and violent and that speak to the reality of inequality generation after generation. As an intellectual community, we will better inform ourselves and each other of these histories and how they have affected higher education through and through. We commit as a mission-based intellectual community to reevaluating who we are and what we aspire to; the curricula we uphold; the priorities, policies, and practices that guide our work; and those who we bring to our college that will shape our common future. We enlist the arts and design in helping break cycles of discrimination and in working toward more positive, empowering, and just futures.
At the University a conscious effort is made to not only recognize the campus community as diverse but also to prepare our students for life’s diverse conditions. Visit the Office of Diversity and Inclusion website to learn more about the University's diversity plan, access campus resources, and see related news and events.
2020/21 Diversity Council
The Team: Aly Amidei (Theatre), David Gall (Art and Art History), Sheena Smallwood (CoA+A Staff), Nadia Anderson (Architecture), Hali Hutchison (Performing Arts Services), Kim Jones (Dance), Kelsey Klotz (Music), and Carlos Cruz (Council Chair).
Your student diversity council
We acknowledge the importance of our student body collective voice as we look to address not only our future as the College of Arts + Architecture but as we aim to be a welcoming environment for all people and all future students. These individuals will represent their academic units as equal partners in the discussion around College efforts to improve and support all students, and we look forward to the current and future collaboration with these future leaders. Hear their visions →