Education

Georgia State University To Launch New College Of The Arts

May 16th, 2016

Georgia State University is moving some of its more creative departments out of the College of Arts and Sciences into a brand new College of the Arts next summer.

The founding dean, Wade Weast, was hired last year to bring more attention to the arts and create a dedicated college, separate from the College of Arts and Sciences.

“It’s safe to say that we’re already a major player in the arts scene in Atlanta and I think this bold moves extends that and makes it such that the arts are more visible at Georgia State University,” Weast said. “And our hope is that we can begin to revitalize downtown and make it a better place to live, work and play.”

Weast says part of the goal is to be able to retain and attract top faculty members.

“There’s lots of departments within the current College of Arts and Sciences. It’s the largest college at Georgia State,” Weast said. “It just ends up being that with the sciences and all the other programs, sometimes the arts can get lost, so I think putting them in their own college and enabling the faculty within the college to explore collaboration will be a good thing.”

Another goal is to cater to on-campus students as the university looks to become less of a commuter campus.

“There’s an increase in the number of on-campus students at Georgia State University,” Weast said. “We’re hoping to provide arts programming for those on-campus students who would otherwise have to go off-campus for their arts events, so we’re going to really tap into that as best we can.”

The new College of the Arts will start off combining several schools and departments including film and theater, the school of music and school of art and design.

Weast said his goal is to begin construction on a new building for the school in the next five years. The new college will have 90 faculty members and approximately 2,000 students when it launches July 2017.