LMU College of Communication and Fine Arts

Administration

• Dean: Bryant Keith Alexander
• Associate Dean: Michele Hammers
• Assistant Dean: Elaine P. Walker

Mission of the College

Grounded in and sustained by a significant commitment to an excellent liberal education, the LMU College of Communication and Fine Arts aims to promote the Mission of Loyola Marymount University in the following ways:

• Foster the encouragement of learning in all of our academic programs and endeavors;
• Contribute in a distinctive way to the education of the whole person;
• Create in our own community and in the larger community beyond LMU the individual and collective resources and orientations that will allow us to create a more compassionate and just world.

The College of Communication and Fine Arts creates an environment conducive to understanding the complex phenomena of art and art making as well as human communication in all its diverse forms. Driven by a passionate commitment to study, understand, and experience human creative expression requires that we assist students and our various publics in adopting a critical and discerning orientation to human artistic and communicative expression. We develop both the capacity for human artistic expression and the capacity for other forms of communication as life-enhancing opportunities to promote the common good and contribute to the full development of our students, faculty, staff, alumni, and those we serve beyond LMU.

Our undergraduate programs in Art and Art History, Communication Studies, Dance, Music, and Theatre Arts and our graduate programs in Marital and Family Therapy (grounded in clinical art therapy) and Performance Pedagogy foster deep inquiry into the processes and artifacts of human expression and their capacity to shape life’s experiences, meanings, and expectations. We are intrigued by the ways in which art and communication reveal human interiority in all its mysterious and complex diversity. Ultimately, our shared objective is to create and sustain a learning community composed of individuals, each more fully alive, more capable of experiencing life in all its complexity, in order to assist all to live more meaningful and productive lives. Our educational programs and personal interactions with students motivate them to continue learning throughout their lives. Our courses and programs are embedded in a learning community characterized by close contact between faculty, staff, and students that encourages students and their mentors to realize our individual and collective potential to make meaningful contributions to a world in need of our most discerning intelligence and our most creative and compassionate responses. In order to respond most effectively to a challenging and diverse world, the College develops its curricular and program initiatives to promote specific student learning outcomes, developing in them the capacity to make informed, capable, and compassionate contributions through their professional lives and their personal relationships.

College of Communication and Fine Arts Student Learning Outcomes

By engaging and fully participating in academic programs in the College of Communication and Fine Arts, our students should develop a critical understanding of:

• The history, theories, techniques, approaches, and orientations appropriate to their academic disciplines in the arts, communication studies, and marital and family therapy (clinical art therapy)
• The ways this body of knowledge and its distinctive understandings relate to and inform other ways of knowing and other forms of human expression in all its diversity
• The significant consequences and potentially transformative impact of our individual and collective capacity to create or to communicate something that would not exist were it not for our own expression.

By engaging and fully participating in academic programs in CFA, our students should be able to:

• Integrate and incorporate the knowledge of their disciplines into their own work in a creative and increasingly accomplished way
• Develop the capacity to be receptive to the critiques of others and to be deeply self-reflective about their own work
• Experience their work as central to their own personal development and accept their responsibility to other people and the world we share
• Offer discerning responses to the human expressions and created art works of others
• Collaborate with others in exploring how to create and communicate, bringing the interior world of our private selves into the public sphere in ways that engage and enlighten.

By engaging and fully participating in academic programs in CFA, our students should value:

• Imagination, intuition, and spirituality as an essential part of life
• The power of human creativity and human communication to transform our innermost private lives and our relationships in an increasingly diverse and complex public sphere
• The complexity and diversity of human experience reflected in an openness to respond to other people from varied backgrounds, cultures, and belief systems in a socially just and compassionate way
• The role that the arts and communication play in creating and re-creating cultures, meanings, and expectations that shape our lives in profound ways.

Application of General University Requirements

The University requirements for admission, graduation, and all general rules and regulations of the University as set forth in this Bulletin are applicable to and binding upon all students enrolled in the College of Communication and Fine Arts.

Teacher Preparation Program

The College of Communication and Fine Arts offers a subject matter preparation program in art education specially designed to meet the State of California subject matter requirements for a secondary credential. The Bachelor of Fine Arts degree with an emphasis in Art Education is designed to allow completion of the California Preliminary Single Subject (Secondary) credential in four years. This program is offered in conjunction with the School of Education. All students interested in teaching art at a secondary level should contact Teresa I. Lenihan as soon as possible and should also contact the School of Education to arrange a time to attend an Undergraduate Information Session.

College Curriculum

The curriculum of each department in the College of Communication and Fine Arts incorporates required courses in general education, major sequences, and elective courses which complement and enhance the student’s major field of concentration.

Total Program

120 semester hours are required for graduation with the following distribution (Dance, Music, Theatre Arts):

1. At least 45 semester hours are required from upper division offerings.

Students should consult the Dean’s Office for specific policies applicable to the College of Communication and Fine Arts.

124 semester hours are required for graduation with the following distribution (Art History, Communication Studies, Art and Design, Studio Arts)

1. At least 45 semester hours are required from upper division offerings.

Students should consult the Dean’s Office for specific policies applicable to the College of Communication and Fine Arts.

Individualized Study Program

Admission to the Individualized Study Program in Communication and Fine Arts is granted in limited cases based on a series of discipline-based requirements. In all cases a student must have:

1. A B (3.0) grade point average.
2. The submission of an Individualized Study Program form delineating courses and signed by the student’s advisor and the chairperson of the advisor’s department.
3. The submission by the advisor of a complete curriculum.
4. The signature of the Dean(s) of the College(s) where coursework resides.

All subsequent changes in the Individualized Study Program require points 2, 3, and 4 above.

Students registering for an Individualized Study Program are advised that their diploma and transcript will read “Individualized Study” and not the specific major they elect within that program.