KATHRINE G. MCGOVERN COLLEGE OF THE ARTS
STRATEGIC PLAN 2022 - 2027
VISION
The Kathrine G. McGovern College of the Arts at the University of Houston will become a premier institution for education, scholarship, and innovation in the arts at a major public research university.
Cultivating Curiosity. Fueling Research. Achieving Excellence.
CORE BELIEFS
The College believes in the transformative power of the arts for the individual, community, broader society, and world; and the arts as a vehicle to unlock the potential of faculty and students to positively impact the broader society through their skills, contributions, convictions, and education.
CORE PURPOSE
The College’s primary purpose is the advancement of the arts, through research, practice, and the cultivating of the next generation of creative professionals and audiences. The College commits to sustainable practices in the arts that actively address and advance the public well-being. The College educates its students to be resourceful, inventive, and engaged creative leaders and arts advocates whose critical thinking and problem-solving skills empower them to profoundly influence their community and culture.
STRATEGIC PRIORITY 1
Become a nationally recognized, premier public institution that trains students to become leaders through innovative arts education and scholarship.
GOALS
1a. Offer students an exceptional interdisciplinary arts education, through a combination of an innovative, diverse, and accessible curriculum as well as a strong disciplinary foundation, that prepares them for success in the versatile and adaptable workforce of the future.
1b. Engage students through innovative pedagogy that will develop their leadership, risk-taking, critical thinking, and problem-solving skills in order to position them to fulfill their roles as informed, responsible citizen-artists, arts advocates, and educators.
1c. Support the innovative research of our leading faculty creative professionals. Advance the arts disciplines and art forms through the production of new knowledge and new creative processes. Utilize research to inform and expand pedagogy, and model the highest level of contemporary professional practice while engaging students as collaborators.
1d. Support the College’s emerging student creative professionals through advanced research opportunities, internships, learning abroad programs, and apprenticeship programs.
OBJECTIVES
1. Develop a McGovern Visiting Scholars Program that deeply engages a diverse array of visiting artists with the College’s curriculum and programs.
2. Form a McGovern Alumni Task Force through which alumni of the College will advise College leadership and faculty on their experience with the curriculum and on strategies for updating the curriculum.
3. Charge the College’s standing Graduate and Undergraduate Curriculum Committees with reviewing and reporting annually on national best practices for innovative curricula in the visual and performing arts, in order to inform current and future curricula in the College.
4. Create measurable objectives for and report on the number of proposals for new courses or course revisions submitted in the College each year.
5. Create measurable objectives for and report on the College’s research metrics each year.
6. Establish a protocol to review the College’s FDL policies and internal grant programs each year, to ensure continued alignment with College research priorities.
7. Establish a protocol for tracking career placement of graduate students following graduation.
8. Establish a protocol for evaluating the factors driving college choice for incoming students in all College disciplines.
9. Establish a formal mentoring program for junior faculty in all College units.
10. Collaborate with the Office of the Provost and the College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences to establish an arts and humanities research center at the University of Houston.
STRATEGIC PRIORITY 2
Holding the transformative nature of the arts to be a core value, the College will immerse and inspire students in values of civic and social responsibility in arts education, advocacy, and practice.
GOALS
2a. Affirm and commit to the importance of leading by embodying diversity and equity within operational culture and within practices, events, and courses, at a level suitable for a College located in a city that is the fourth-largest in the U.S., on the forefront of the nation’s demographic future, and at the gateway to the international arts community.
2b. Create a curriculum, core as well as elective, that supports a diverse, equitable, inclusive, and accessible environment for teaching, learning, research, and advocacy in the arts. Address historical and structural inequities by ensuring that College programs, curricular and co-curricular, embrace a canon that reflects the scope of arts practices in today’s global society.
2c. Engage the arts institutions and arts community of the city of Houston to develop the next generation of artists, leaders, and professionals. Ensure that the breadth of opportunities available in Houston plays an integral role in the College’s educational experience and success.
OBJECTIVES
1. Establish standing Committees on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in all Schools and at the College level.
2.Provide access to higher education in the arts for a student body that reflects the city of Houston in its diversity.
3. Require that all programs involving collaboration with external institutions undergo an annual evaluation for sustainability, in cooperation with program stakeholders, and report on this evaluation annually to the Dean.
STRATEGIC PRIORITY 3
Through enhanced public communications, engagement, and visibility, the McGovern College of the Arts will become a major arts and cultural destination on the University of Houston campus and in the city of Houston
GOALS
3a. Establish the College as a laboratory for the arts, in which creative collaborations among students, faculty, staff, and visiting artists and scholars position the College as a leading producer of the arts in Houston and as an arts destination internationally recognized for unique, experimental, and cross-disciplinary arts programming.
3b. Strengthen the College’s marketing and communications infrastructure in order to enhance its public presence and visibility, including its digital presence, on the web, social media, and other digital outlets.
3c. Engage the entire university community, including non-arts majors, with productions, performances, exhibitions, and opportunities for co-curricular arts training.
OBJECTIVES
1. Establish protocols to systematically measure audience size among ticketed audiences (from both inside and outside the University community) and on measurable social media channels; report on these metrics annually.
2. Create a monthly College newsletter to enhance internal and external communications.
3. Hire a sustainable staff, with skills targeted to the needs of the College, in the College’s Marketing and Communications division.
4. Establish a brand identity for the College and integrate this identity across the College’s divisions, including in recruitment materials.
STRATEGIC PRIORITY 4
An engaged community and philanthropic network will play an active role in the College’s success.
GOALS
4a. Prioritize civic and social engagement as a means to impact, and integrate the College into, its Second and Third Ward neighborhoods, the city at large, and beyond. Affirm, through civic partnerships, the central role of the arts in shaping a healthy and creative society.
4b. Build a community network—one that is among the strongest nationwide for a comprehensive arts program at a public university—that works steadfastly to support the College’s priorities with its philanthropy, both with endowment and sustainable annual funding.
OBJECTIVES
1. Partner with the University of Houston Alumni Association, and conduct independent research on best practices, with the aim of forming an alumni organization for the McGovern College of the Arts.
2. Establish a protocol for recruiting students to the alumni organization immediately upon their graduation.
3. Create a series of engagement opportunities for College alumni who live regionally or beyond.
STRATEGIC PRIORITY 5
The College will build the intellectual and physical infrastructure required to advance its strategic goals.
GOALS
5a. Recruit and retain an innovative, engaged, and diverse faculty, staff, and student body.
5b. Optimize delivery of administrative services throughout the College, with enhanced efficiency and responsible management of financial resources. The scope of staff support will be proportional to the scope of the College’s operations.
5c. Work collaboratively with the Offices of the Provost, Finance and Administration, and Facilities and Planning to improve the College’s facilities with respect to building maintenance, renovations, safety, and sustainability.
OBJECTIVES
1. Achieve “Sustainable Department Status.”
2. Recruit and retain a College faculty that reflects the city of Houston in its diversity.
3. Establish a protocol to evaluate diversity of candidate pools in all faculty and staff searches and report on these metrics annually.
4. Establish clear procedures and pathways for staff training and career advancement.
5. Build efficient, state-of-the-art facilities that address the significant shortfall in the amount of space in which the College can carry out its research and teaching missions.
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