School of the Arts ranks sixth in nation in latest U.S. News and World Report

VCU’s School of the Arts’ sixth-place ranking in U.S. News and World Report’s “America’s Best Graduate Schools 2004” establishes the VCU name across the country, said Richard Toscan, dean of the school.

In 1996, he said, the arts school ranked 25th, and VCU’s Board of Visitors set the goal of putting the school in the top five.

“Practically everything we’ve done for the past seven years has been for national notice,” Toscan said. “It’s so important to our students.”

Fernando Aidinian-Mastrangelo, a graduate sculpture student, said the ranking could mean more national and international attention, while John LaPrade, a graduating senior in the sculpture department, said he thinks the ranking also reflects well on the undergraduate program.

“I was pretty excited … Hopefully it’ll help me get in to a grad school later,” LaPrade said. “Since we share the same faculty, we’re part of the number one school in the country. I think it reflects a lot. The undergraduate program is larger and more diverse. It’s good support for them.”

The survey, conducted by the research company Synovate, ranked arts schools based on a peer-assessment survey.

Robert Morse, director of data research at U.S. News and World Report, said the publication handled all aspects of the data. Synovate was given the survey questionnaire, the list of schools and paid to mail the forms and tabulate the returns.

The magazine developed the list of schools and specialties in cooperation with the Slane College of Communications and Fine Arts at Bradley University in Peoria, Ill., which the school did pro bono.

“They (U.S. News and World Report) tend to send it (the questionnaire) to the senior administrator for art and design schools across the country,” Toscan said, adding that he completed the questionnaire.

Citing specific disciplines, the VCU school ranked first in sculpture, fourth in graphic design, and 10th in painting and drawing.

“I think the program’s been very good for a long time,” said Myron Helfgott, acting chair of the sculpture department. “I’m not sure we’ve made such a big jump.”

Better students and a better program contributed to the rankings, Helfgott said, but the faculty has remained pretty much the same.

“Most of the people here are guilders,” Helfgott said, referring to faculty who still sculpt professionally.

Toscan offered a similar viewpoint, saying faculty have a huge commitment to teach, but many have very active professional lives.

Furthermore, both Toscan and Helfgott agree that raising the school’s public profile has been vital to the rise in the school’s ranking.

“It has a lot to do with name recognition, letting people understand VCU is the school,” the dean said, suggesting that people have known that there was something going on in Richmond, but they had a disconnect between VCU and “the arts school in Richmond.

“During this seven years (from 1996 to now) we did a lot of presentations with either national or large regional focus events.”

In addition, awards, graduate placements and dealers have “created a lot of buzz.” The school, for instance, sponsors an exhibit every two years of recently graduated students’ work at the Kim Foster Gallery in New York City.

The show titled “Fresh Meat” became “the thing to go to every two years in New York,” Toscan said, while Helfgott pointed out that it gave the graduate program good press, and it attracts a lot of people to the gallery.

Still, word-of-mouth has much to do with the school’s success.

“The school has always attracted many more students from outside the state than any other program,” Toscan said. “These students usually end up talking to professors from their undergrad back home.”

Moreover, he attributed the VCU College of Design Arts in Qatar as not only raising the school’s profile but also its budget through fees the school generates.

“Starting the design college in Qatar – it was such a weird idea for Americans that we would teach design in the Mideast.”

Additionally, the two administrators both credit the Fine Arts Building on West Broad Street as raising the profile of the school. Helfgott recalled an arts administrators conference he attended at VCU.

“These things are notoriously boring, but this was wonderful. People saw the facility and were enthusiastic,” the sculpture department chair said. “It’s especially impressive when many graduates come to see the building. They’re very impressed with the equipment and the building itself.”

Toscan called the new Fine Arts Building on Broad “the best studio facility in the country. That’s had a huge impact.”

Despite the facilities, the school still faced budget cuts.

“We’ve had a lot of support from the university with the new building,” Toscan said, “but the School of the Arts had one of the largest budget cuts. We hope (students) won’t see it, but there may be more adjunct faculty teaching. They will see it in the increased School of the Arts fee, which they’ve already started to pay.

“If the state won’t pay … then the burden falls on the students,” which causes concern about creating economic barriers to students in a state college.

“It’s not how you like to run a program in a public university,” he said. “The state of Virginia has started to remove itself from the education funding business. It’s been going on for the past 10 years. I see no indication that the state will stop cutting budgets. What we’re seeing now is the wave of the future.”

In light of these budget cuts, the dean used “consolidating” as the key word to describe what will occur the next five years. He also warned that the school and the faculty cannot become complacent.

The goal of the School of the Arts for now, he said, is to move up from sixth to fifth place in the U.S. News and World Report rankings in those five years.

“We’ll have to split hairs, but I think it’s possible for us to do that.”

Helfgott offered another viewpoint:

“Dr. Trani has his pet programs. This hasn’t been one. There’s been a lot of lip service … an e-mail. That was all.”