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Posted 11-5-98
A three-year, $115,000 grant from the Hewlett Foundation will send students to the orchestra, theater, and local museums for experiences in the arts, as Case Western Reserve University's College of Arts and Sciences strengthens its links with University Circle's cultural institutions.
The art history, music, and theater arts departments have begun to look at ways to incorporate more hands-on experiences for non-majors to fulfill their general education requirements in the arts, said Danielle Ripich, associate dean of the College of Arts and Sciences.
The college has several collaborations for its majors -- art history classes taught by curators at the art museum, a theater collaboration at the Cleveland Play House, and classes with the Cleveland Institute of Music and the Cleveland Institute of Art.
Beyond orientation, few students beyond arts and humanities majors visited the cultural institutions next door to the University, the college has found.
One goal is to increase student audiences at concerts, new exhibits, and plays in University Circle.
"The idea is to get them comfortable in these institutions and see them as their laboratories for the humanities and the arts," Ripich said.
Plans call for students moving out of large halls with lectures and slide presentations into small classes of 25 for field trips, guests artists, or other inventive educational strategies.
She said the faculty's enthusiastic response to the idea expanded the project. Originally 100 students were expected to participate in some 11 pilot or modified courses through the year 2000, but this number has increased to 250 students.
A planning committee has met to map out ways to the integrate the learning experience with real-world sites, said Ripich. She envisions people from the museums coming to campus, as well as students going to the institutions for course work.
Serving on the committee are Mary Davis, Ross Duffin, and Robert Dunn from music; Christa Carvajal and John Orlock from theater arts; and Dario Gamboni and Ellen Landau from art history.
The committee is looking at ways to revise introductory courses and plan for a new interdisciplinary offering, called "Is It Art?", which faculty from the three departments will team teach.
Orlock, chair of the Department of Theater Arts, was so excited about the grant possibilities that he went beyond the classroom and arranged discounts for CWRU students to attend Cleveland Play House productions this season.
According to Duffin, chair of the Department of Music, a dialogue has started with the Cleveland Orchestra to find blocks of seats for concerts for Dunn's Music 221 course -- music theory for non-majors -- to plan lessons around the concerts.
Talks also include the possibility of the orchestra hosting a welcome concert each fall on campus, as well as implementing of a process through which CWRU students could help choose works for a Cleveland Orchestra concert each year, he added.
Similar discussions will take place with the Cleveland Institute of Music and the Cleveland Museum of Art for their concert series, Duffin said.
The Hewlett grant and a new IBM grant will enable Dunn to have his entire syllabus of music selections for class topics digitized through a new technology called audio and video streaming, which is a virtual library and databank of music information. (See accompanying article.)
The development of the streaming process for music will become the prototype for the streaming efforts in theater, art, and other disciplines on campus that have a need for high-quality audio and visual materials in the classroom.
Tentative plans also call for music education students to work as docents for the orchestra.
Dario Gamboni, the Mellon Professor of Art History, will revise the course, "Visual Culture," offered several years ago.
"My intention is to select relevant objects from as many University Circle institutions as possible," said Gamboni.
He added that the general idea is give students means of dealing in a critical way with visual and material culture at large, to help them reflect on the position that the visual arts take in this culture historically and currently, and to encourage students to take advantage of the resources of University Circle institutions.
Gamboni's course will cover such topics as perception, the image and imagination, functions of images, symbolization, ornament, and the social life of objects.
He plans to have students involved not only with the art museum, but Western Reserve Historical Society, the Museum of Natural History, Allen Memorial Library, and campus architecture and sculptures in an effort to confront student with real objects.
Once the arts departments have integrated University Circle arts opportunities into the curriculum, Ripich noted, the next step will be to develop similar collaborative learning experiences in the general education courses of the humanities, social sciences, and sciences.
"This has the potential for reinvigorating our thinking about general education," Ripich said.
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