The Center includes a recital hall, which will also be used for lectures and film screenings; facilities for photography, printmaking, and graphic design; a computer resource center; lounge areas that encourage interdisciplinary collaboration; and a multimedia center specially equipped for students to do individual and collaborative work in music, video, and Web-site design.

According to Clark University President John Bassett, "Visual and performing arts departments play a unique role on college campuses. They are the only ones with a triple purpose: academic programs, student activities, and events for the community. Like other colleges throughout America, Clark University knows how important excellent arts facilities and programs are to academic and social life on campus. We hope our new state-of-the-art facility will be a special attraction that will provide cultural enrichment, not only to our students, but to the many others who will be drawn to our campus."

According to Linda Snyder, associate dean for the humanities and fine arts, creating a center for the performing and visual arts will support the artistic talents of the University of Dayton's faculty and students. "Combining learning, performance, and exhibition spaces in one facility will also enhance UD's 'connected learning' and 'learning village' initiatives. UD has long recognized the value of the arts in the education of the whole person. This new Center for the Performing and Visual Arts will enable UD to further extend its many contributions and leadership in the arts to the greater Dayton community."

The approximately 160,000-square-foot facility will include a 1,200-seat theater, a 400-seat recital hall, two experimental media studios, a dance studio, music practice rooms, and a café.

The performing arts center will help foster a discourse between the scientific and engineering research of a major technological university and the emerging art forms created by contemporary technology. It will provide a venue for intercollegiate competitions and exchanges, shows and concerts, and appearances by internationally recognized figures from science, the arts and humanities, and politics. "Rensselaer will use the center to create a renaissance at Rensselaer, merging art and technology, embodying the qualities of da Vinci -- inquiry, imagination, scientific and technological rigor, vision and creativity -- to provide a broader, richer sense of the world and its possibilities," Rensselaer President Shirley Ann Jackson said.

Rensselaer has hired an artistic director, Johannes Goebel, to develop the programming for the arts center. The center, still in its design stages, is expected to be completed in 2006.

"The experimental media and performing arts center means to open the eye, the mind, and the heart to new modes of artistic expression," Goebel says. "The facility and the programs within will bring Rensselaer together as a community, and allow us to link collaboratively to the active arts communities in our region and beyond."

Nicholas Grimshaw & Partners from London is designing the arts center. The company, perhaps best known for its award-winning design of London's International Terminal Waterloo (completed 1993), was chosen from a handful of internationally known architectural firms invited by Rensselaer to submit design proposals for a formal, juried design competition.

President Samuel Hulbert, known to enjoy a thespian moment on occasion, said, "Our students have exceptional musical and theatrical talents which can now be displayed in an ultramodern facility where those talents can be thoroughly appreciated." Rose-Hulman, predominantly an undergraduate engineering institution, is educating its students to be "renaissance engineers."

Despite the theater designers' involvement in the large Broadway theaters, the planners were mindful of what encompasses the appropriate space, for example, for ample projection by non-performance majors. The new center was designed by the Cambridge, Mass., architectural firm Perry Dean Rogers, in association with theater designer Fisher Dachs of New York City. The campus planning committee included students and faculty. The building will house a proscenium arch theater of 350 seats; a "black box" experimental performance space, theater and teaching support facilities and a gallery and work space for art students as well. The $25 million center will be financed by gifts to the college. Construction is expected to begin this spring.

"Student interest in the arts is overflowing the campus and outgrowing existing facilities," said President John Strassburger. The number of students attending and participating in the college's two theater performances each semester has grown considerably, including some 500 students attending the Ursinus Fringe Festival, held the last three years. But Strassburger added that the arts is a necessity to attract students in all disciplines and the college has seen a growth in students majoring in one discipline with a minor in the arts. "Students tell us they want to transcend their major," he said. "There is mounting evidence that science students benefit from studying literature and the arts, adding to their creativity as scientists and helping them to become more aware of moral and ethical issues.

"The conclusion that modern liberal education requires more emphasis on the arts is becoming a national ideal. The arts will enable us to more completely fulfill the compelling need to learn about other cultures, and to educate our consciences."

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