We're proud of the strength of our College! Our 91.4% freshmen retention rate and 4-year/64.5% and 6-year/69% graduation rates consistently exceed national numbers.
Mission
The College of Arts + Architecture promotes the arts and design as engines of civic imagination and social equity through distinction in creative teaching and research, artistic performance, and community-driven work.
Vision
Through investigations in the performing and visual arts, design and affiliated pursuits, we provoke thought, cultivate aesthetic sensibilities, make space for memory and reflection, instigate creative action, help build communities, and promote justice, equity, and inclusion.
The College’s vision is shaped by five challenges to contemporary arts and architecture and in response to our unique location and institutional context:
- The need to catalyze the institution’s mission as an urban research university through creative work, research, student empowerment, and partnerships in the Charlotte region and beyond
- The need to reposition curricula and embrace through our teaching and learning diverse and global perspectives, anti-racism, social equity, and environmental justice
- The need to interrogate current modes of valuation and to advance more inclusive practices, processes, and policies
- The need for collaboration across disciplines and domains so as to be able to ask bolder and more relevant questions and expand students’ understandings of their roles and opportunities for achievement
- The need to embrace a rapidly changing arts and design, technology, demographic, economic, higher education, and post-pandemic landscape.
Strategic Plan
It is the College’s intention to fulfill the goals and objectives articulated below. As a community of educators, scholars, and practitioners in the arts, design, and affiliated fields, we are also prepared to respond creatively to the unforeseen. Through an inclusive process involving students and alumni, faculty and staff, and community partners, the College completed the 2021-26 CoA+A Strategic Plan in Spring 2021.
1. Build the CoA+A’s visibility, reputation, and strength as a college of visual arts, performing arts, design, and history.
2. Improve financial stewardship to best support the mission of the CoA+A; mindfully and transparently employ resources in support of College and unit priorities.
1. Increase interdisciplinary research and study opportunities at UNC Charlotte.
2. Increase community-centered research and learning.
1. Revise curricula to create an inclusive climate and a culture of belonging and to prepare students to thrive and create in a global society.
2. Recruit, retain and mentor diverse faculty and staff of different ages, races, ethnicities, backgrounds, identities, and abilities; support initiatives that eliminate barriers to an inclusive climate and a culture of belonging in the college.
3. Attract and nurture a diverse student body and promote openness and respect for and understanding of others.
1. Demonstrate social and environmental sustainability in College operations.
2. Develop curricula and advance research, creative practices, and projects that address the 17 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.