Part II. Program Data, Short Narratives – School of Art and Design
(A) Productivity
The School of Art and Design (SoAD) is the largest and most comprehensive art and
design school in the state. SoAD has twice as many MFA students than any other
program in the North Carolina system and has the largest BFA program in the UNC
system.
2009-2010 SoAD Statistics from General Administration. The School had:
637 BFA and BA students in the program; 71 BFA students graduated that year.
46 MFA students in the program; 14 MFA students graduated that year.
24 MAEd upper division students in the program; 13 MAEd students graduated that year.
During the academic year 2009-2010, Media Production (MPRD) was transferred from the
School of Communication (SoC) to the SoAD. MPRD consisted of five full-time faculty
members. This past year, these five full-time faculty members had to cover twenty-nine
courses in the SoC, averaging 15 students per course: 435 x 3 = 1305 Media Production
(MPRD) SCH for which the SoC was given credit. SoAD included these additional 5 FTE
without any SCH counting toward their benefit. There are now 67 MPRD students in the
SoC. MPRD is transitioning out of SoC and will become CAMP (Cinematic Arts and Media
Production) at SoAD. Two years from now all MPRD students will have graduated and all
CAMP majors, an anticipated 130 students, will be in SoAD.
Our faculty teach eighteen contact hours per semester (eighteen is the maximum that
our national accreditation organization, National Association of Schools of Art and Design,
allows). Even with the high number of contact hours our faculty have been very productive.
The SoAD faculty are recognized nationally and internationally for their work; during the
last three academic years our faculty participated in 746 exhibitions and professional
presentations in 35 states and 16 countries. It is important to point out that our graduate
students are also very productive professionally. During the academic years of 2008-2009
and 2009-2010 (the last time these statistics were gathered) graduate students in SoAD
participated in 428 exhibitions in 26 states and they received 110 honors, scholarships and
awards.
Our on-campus programs will continue to be viable and affordable. The presence of
creative activity in different parts of the campus invigorates the community and helps to
integrate its parts. This experience can assure that ECU students are afforded servicelearning projects and professional opportunities in the field during their course of study.
This prepares them for their career and allows them to excel in the development of holistic
approaches to their learning and cultural competencies. Even non-art majors will benefit
from the experience and be prepared to participate in cultural organizations.
Volunteers invest over $13 million in time spent supporting cultural organizations.
NCSU Arts Organizations Study
Nonprofit and public sector arts organizations working directly with the North Carolina Arts
Council in 2005 provided more than 1,200 full-time jobs earning more than $47 million in
total salaries and involved nearly 43,000 volunteers whose time is valued at $13 million.
Cultural offerings create a quality of life that recruits new talent and keeps skilled
workers. N.C. Department of Commerce Business Development Asset
The Business Services Site Selectors Toolkit touts cultural amenities:
“North Carolina offers an exceptional quality of life that contributes to a highly desirable
place for businesses to attract and keep skilled workers with a culture rich in history
and the arts. The state’s cultural offerings, rich history and variety of arts, and
intense collegiate and professional sports rivalries create a quality of life that recruits
new talent.”
Across the state there are more than 1,000 arts facilities in cities and towns. The arts have
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been a catalyst for downtown and neighborhood revitalization since the early 1980s. Many
new major art centers have opened in our larger cities across the state in the last two
years and many of our graduates work in and for these facilities.
Help local rural communities expand their understanding of their own creative
economies and how these can be leveraged to improve their overall economic
fortunes. Although many small rural communities know that they are home to a variety of
artists and artisans and value their presence, they have not yet thought extensively about
how this artistic activity can translate into expanded economic activity. Most do not know
how to examine the status of their own creative assets nor how to leverage them.
Expanded opportunities for rural communities to understand what the creative economy is,
and how it can be built upon in their own local economies, could do a great deal to help
rural communities exploit their creative assets.
NC Arts Council/NC Rural Economic
Development Center
Public support of the arts helps ensure that all citizens have access to the arts, regardless
of economic status, education, geographic location, level of artistic talent or special needs.
Steady interest in and attendance at arts events throughout the state indicates that the
intrinsic benefits gained from the arts have importance to North Carolinians.
(B)Centrality
The visual arts have been a major component of instruction at ECU since the first faculty
class was hired in 1909 (Kate Lewis). ECU has always believed that knowledge of and
participation in visual art and design preparing graduates to deal with the complexity,
diversity, and ambiguity of human societies, qualities required of strong leaders.
Graduates will lead and inspire, understanding complexity, finding creative solutions to
problems, and navigating the richness of human culture while advancing the arts and
humanities.
Faculty contribute by promoting and providing opportunities within national and
international arts programs. Students and faculty integrate these experiences into their
classes and communities through exhibitions, service-learning projects, teaching
workshops and programming such as the Youth Arts Festival that attracts thousands of
families. We fill an important role in the cultural life of the area, both “town and gown.” The
School of Art and Design has long been held as a cornerstone of East Carolina University
in part by providing these opportunities to the community at large. In turn, this allows us to
contribute to the culture and quality of life in our community, stimulate the local creative
economy, and promote Greenville as an arts destination. Additionally, our close
relationship with Emerge Gallery/the Pitt County Arts Council serves to further this
mission.
Given the scale and significance of our school state-wide, it is clear that the School of Art
and Design is a major contributor to North Carolina’s creative industry. The following
examples are an indication of how important the creative sector is to the North Carolina
economy.
Examples of Art Career Earnings for Artists and Related Workers in NC
Category
Median Salary Middle 50%
Top 10%
Salaried Art
$76,980
between $54,490 and
$154,840
Directors
$108,090
+
Salaried Craft Artists $29,080.
between $20,730 and
$54,550+
$39,120
Salaried Fine Artists $42,650
between $29,230 and
$83,410+
$60,650
Multimedia artists &
$56,330
between $41,710 and
$100,390
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Animators
$77,010
+
Median annual wages were $65,600 in motion picture and video industries, and
$52,530 in advertising and related services.
Overview of North Carolina’s Creative Industry
Category
Establishments
Design manufacturing
317
Artists
15,571
Design services
14,175
Other services
3,910
Retail
7,271
Information and entertainment
4,343
Public sector and education
635
Publishing and printing
1,323
Total
47,545
Workers
7,387
17,727
24,453
9,422
19,903
29,343
26,127
29,963
164,325
Every 100 jobs in the arts in North Carolina can be expected to support an
additional 29 jobs in other industries. UNC-G School of Business Economic Impact
Study
This study calculates the economic impact of 263 selected non-profit arts organizations
directly connected to the N. C. Arts Council in 2006. In FY 2006, the aggregate state- wide
economic impact of these arts organizations was $367.4 million of final demand (revenue),
$184.9 million in value added (product), and 8,559 full and part-time jobs.
The core creative enterprise cluster employs more people than biotechnology,
computers and electronics, machinery, or transportation equipment. Regional
Technology Strategies (RTS) Clusters of Creativity Study
This 2005 study found that the presence of creative professionals in a given county is the
single most important factor associated with the amount that visitors will spend. The
presence of creative workers is also strongly associated with rising household incomes.
Counties with higher proportions of workers in arts-related occupations are more likely to
retain current residents and attract new ones.
In 2006, this creative sector employment was analyzed to include nonprofit and public
sector as well as the private sector and was estimated at more than four percent of total
employment in North Carolina. Nearly 159,000 people were employed in creative
industries, with total wages of more than $3.9 billion.
The Arts = Jobs: A National Perspective
The United States arts industry supports:
• $5.7 million jobs
• 100,000 nonprofit arts organizations
• 612,000 arts-centric businesses
• $29.6 billion in tax revenues
• $166.2 billion total economic impact
(C)Quality
Actively seizing the opportunity to integrate the arts with its tradition of world-class
scholarship and learning in the humanities, SoAD and the College of Fine Arts and
Communication send a clear message that the creative arts are worthy of a prominent
voice and presence within ECU and the community. Ensure that the arts are integrated
into ECU’s academic and campus life, rather than isolated from it, giving the arts a visible
place that communicates ECU’s commitment to cultural enrichment and an improved
quality of life. The following events are examples of this commitment.
• Print Summit – the 2010 printmaking summit brought national artists to campus in
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conjunction with the “Survey of Contemporary Printmaking” exhibition in the Gray Gallery.
• Art Without Borders is an art exhibition accompanied by series of events, such as panel
discussions, artists’ talks, concerts, films, and bilingual workshops, and introduced the
goal of building and strengthening ties between the diverse groups that make up our
community, and between ECU and the broader community in eastern N C.
•Hosting Jingdezhen’s White and Blue | A Ceramics Conference Celebrating the
Tradition of Chinese Porcelain: This two-day event brought attendees from schools and
ceramics studios throughout North Carolina. An important exchange took place both in
artistic and cultural practices between Jingdezhen, China and our communities.
• East Carolina University’s Belk Distinguished Professor Robert “Bob” Ebendorf was
honored Oct. 7, 2010, for his contributions in the arts; he was among six North Carolinians
to receive the state’s highest civilian honor, the North Carolina Award.
•Additional Symposia and Conferences: Material Topics (which brings in students from
11 states and 8 Universities), Tri-State Sculpture, Pulp Culture (papermaking), and
others
•Italy Program (now at the college level) was initiated for its first few years at SoAD.
(D) Opportunity (SWOT) Analysis
Strengths
•The School of Art and Design (SoAD) is the largest and most comprehensive art and
design school in the state, consisting of 13 concentrations, some of which have national
and inter- national reputations; our faculty also share this high reputation for quality.
•SoAD has the largest BFA programs in Art Education in the state. Most of our students,
upon graduation, are able to find positions in the K-12 system.
•Over the past several years, there has been a significant increase in the growth of our
school in terms of undergraduate and graduate majors.
•Exemplified in our partnerships with Emerge Gallery, Greenville Museum of Art, and the
very successful Youth Arts Festival, our community outreach is expanding each year.
Weaknesses
We need more space for the Cinematic Arts and Media Production and Photography areas.
We need one more faculty member in the following areas because of higher demand:
Graphic Design, Animation/Interactive Design and Foundations/Interdisciplinary
programming.
Opportunities
•We are developing interdisciplinary and cooperative partnerships with the following: North
Carolina Pottery Center in Seagrove; Coastal Studies Institute in Manteo; and the College
of the Albemarle in Manteo.
•We are working to promote interdisciplinary course development and programming,
including papermaking.
•We are working with the city of Greenville to develop an arts incubation space.
•It would be beneficial for ECU to consider bringing the Interior Design program back into
the School and align their design work with SoAD’s programs. The challenge is that they
need to retain their space.
Threats
•There is a concern of diverting resources from SoAD because of the emphasis on STEM.
•Due to the increasing numbers of students attending SoAD, there is a need for additional
space.
•There is a concern with the aging of our facilities and a lack of appropriate ventilation.
Data gathered from the following organizational websites:
US Department of Labor Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Outlook Handbook;
North Carolina Arts Council; American for the Arts; UNC General Administration website;
National Governors Association Center for Best Practices
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