USC’s art department is planning to go by a new name — the School of Visual Art and Design — that it hopes will better capture what it offers and improve its cachet.
Department Chair Peter Chametzky said the school distinction is a “more accurate label,” because it has four main programs — art history, art education, art studio and media arts. Similar programs across the country call themselves schools, he said.
University trustees will have to approve the name change, which could happen this semester. If approved, the art department would become only the second school in the College of Arts and Sciences, along with the School of the Earth, Ocean and Environment.
But the name change wouldn’t affect the department’s structure or funding, Chametzky said. Instead, it’s more of an effort to rebrand.
The name will elevate the department’s competitive graphic design program and its media arts program, which it sees as areas of potential growth that prospective students might miss when they see a name like “Department of Art.”
“They think of painting and sculpture and printmaking and drawing and sculpture and ceramics, which we have, but that’s just one area within the department,” Chametzky said. “When somebody’s looking for a place, maybe they just move on.”
The effort to elevate media arts and design comes as enrollment in the department has fallen. In Fall 2013, there were 526 full-time students in the department, a 16 percent drop over five years, which Chametzky said matches nationwide trends.
Each of the department’s four main majors saw decreases, according to university data. Art history fell 36 percent, and art education and art studio, which includes graphic design, each fell 22 percent. Media arts enrollment fell by 13 percent.
Chametzky said he thinks the name change will also improve the reputation of USC’s art programs overall.
When Chametzky first got a letter saying he was a candidate to be the department’s chair, he said, he tossed it aside. Already the director of the School of Art and Design at Southern Illinois University, being the chair of an art department didn’t seem appealing right away.
“It sounds like a more limited position than what I have now,” he said he thought at the time.
Later, when he researched the program, he said, he realized it was effectively a school. When he came to Columbia in January 2012, making it one became a priority.
“When I brought it up to the faculty at a faculty meeting, it was greeted probably more enthusiastically than any idea I’ve ever (had),” Chametzky said. “I said to the dean afterward, ‘Maybe I should step down now.’ I’m never going to have a more popular idea, I don’t think.”