About Visual & Performing Arts
A Message from the Department Chair
Glen Whitehead, DMAThe Department of Visual and Performing Arts houses programs in Art History, Film Studies, Museum and Gallery Practice, Music, Theatre & Dance, and Visual Arts, including a broad spectrum of degree offerings. Our programs share a mission to explore interdisciplinarity and artistic innovation, and cultivating a thriving student experience is the reason we are here. Our classes remain small and individual mentorship is our mantra.
Are you multitalented in and across the arts?
Students receive strong discipline-specific training while simultaneously gaining unique interdisciplinary breadth. All students are required to take the VAPA Core Curriculum – a unique set of interdisciplinary arts courses that connect across the arts. This curriculum encourages collaboration and sets us apart from other undergraduate arts programs. In this way, students are encouraged to develop their own unique artistic directions that can reach well beyond their home program.
Artistic practice and scholarship work hand in hand.
Our world-renowned faculty are artistic explorers, innovators, entrepreneurs, and visionaries, contributing to new artistic ecosystems at home and beyond. As in artistic periods of the past, the arts play a critical role in our culture today. Our faculty are dedicated to addressing the challenges of our time: diversity, equity and inclusiveness; climate change; health and wellness; new technologies, and more all have homes in our scholarship, curriculum, and creative work. Moreover, our faculty collaborate and connect with fields outside of the arts in the humanities, sciences, education, business, city planning, engineering, psychology, sociology and many more.
Our alumni thrive in careers across the arts and well beyond, regionally and nationally. VAPA graduates become K-12 teachers; gallery owners; actors in theatre, television, and film; opera singers; professional instrumentalists in orchestras and chamber ensembles; rock stars, professors, professionals in the television and movie industry, lawyers, business owners, radio DJs, digital media professionals, studio owners, audio engineers, special effects artists, lighting and sound designers, game designers, composers for game design, film and TV, and more. Moreover, many of our alumni have gone on to some of the best graduate programs in the country.
We look forward to welcoming you into our programs!
- Glen Whitehead, DMA
Department Chair
Mission Statement
The Department of Visual and Performing Arts is founded on the principle of engaging students in scholarly and creative work in the programs of Art History, Film Studies, Museum Studies and Gallery Practice, Music, Theatre & Dance, and Visual Arts, while creating, maintaining and offering a strong foundation of interdisciplinary arts education and practice throughout integrated VAPA programs.
DEI Statement
The VAPA Department strives to foster a diverse community of artists and scholars who create transformative experiences that build a more compassionate, open, and just society. Throughout our teaching, creative practices, research, and service, we champion a broad range of identities and backgrounds across races, ethnicities, nationalities, genders, sexual orientations, ages, socioeconomic statuses, religious beliefs, neurodiversity, and abilities. Click here for the full VAPA Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Statement.
Academic Focus
The academic purpose of the Department of Visual and Performing Arts (VAPA) is to offer collaborative opportunities for scholarship and creative work within an array of integrative arts disciplines. This is achieved through different ways of knowing and studio practice as well as performance and creative applications of media and technology. Students engage in an investigative approach to the arts inspired by critical thinking, research, creative work, dialogue, and improvisation within an atmosphere of learning and teaching where diversity of thought and action is intrinsic to artistic process and practice.
Department Faculty
Faculty across VAPA are engaged artist-scholars who maintain their own artistic and performance practices as a basis for classroom innovations.
VAPA faculty push the boundaries of their disciplines, rethinking the role of the arts in society, and are nationally recognized performers, artists, and scholars who are able to bring the top names in their fields to campus.
VAPA students benefit both from faculty connections to luminaries in the art world and from the genuine commitment of those faculty to their students' success and growth.
Facilities
Students and faculty in VAPA programs have access to multiple state-of-the-art performance, exhibition, and creative production venues including a large concert hall, a smaller recital hall, a large theatre, a black-box theatre, recording and dance studios, gallery spaces, practice rooms, studio spaces, darkrooms, and more. Most are located in the Ent Center for the Arts Complex, with others in additional campus spaces as well as a smaller gallery near the downtown campus. See more below!
Explore Our Facilities
Marie Walsh Sharpe Gallery of Contemporary Art
The UCCS Galleries of Contemporary Art are the most progressive and experimental contemporary art galleries in Colorado Springs, showcasing award-winning work by artists of significant national and international reputation. GOCA's newest exhibition space, the Marie Walsh Sharpe Gallery of Contemporary Art, is located in the Ent Center for the Arts. Designed as a flexible and transformable museum-quality exhibition space, this 2,600 square foot white cube gallery is state-of-the-art with certified humidity control systems. The gallery's flooring system and grid of strong points in the ceiling can accommodate art installations in nearly any configuration.
Landis Family Overlook Studio
This studio is a practice and performance space with unobstructed views to the south and west. Fully outfitted for dance, the space has ballet barres and state-of-the-art sprung marley floors.
Osborne Theatre
The Osborne Theatre is the main performance venue for full-scale collaborative theatre productions and for VAPA Theatre student productions. A flexible black-box theatre with a professional control booth, the Osborne can be rearranged in multiple configurations and seat up to 120 people.
Chapman Foundations Recital Hall
The Chapman Foundations Recital Hall is the central music performance venue of the VAPA Department and is designed to be one of the highest quality acoustic music spaces in the region. Seating 230, its compelling beauty and technical grandeur provide artists and audiences alike with an unparalleled experience. VAPA senior and junior recitals take place here, as well as frequent performances by our ensembles, faculty, visiting artists, and more.
The Dock
The Dock is an installation space and student-run gallery and events center branching off the Painting/Printmaking Studio. Located in Centennial Hall.
VAPA Multimedia Lab
The VAPA Multimedia Lab consists of 30 Mac Studio workstations equipped with the latest multimedia software including Adobe Creative Cloud, Final Cut X, DaVinci Resolve Lite, Audacity, Logic, Pro Tools, Max, and Processing. Scanning capabilities include print, slides, and negatives. In addition, students have access to audio and video recording equipment through the Visual Resource Center. Located in Columbine Hall.
VAPA Interdisciplinary Arts Lab
The VAPA Interdisciplinary Arts Lab in the Ent Center for the Arts is a multiuse, collaborative space for the interdisciplinary curriculum of the Department of Visual and Performing Arts programs (Film Studies, History of Art & Visual Culture, Music, Theatre & Dance, Visual Arts), equipped with an array of technology and resources including multi-media technology, installation and sculpture capabilities, sound, green screen for film, 3D printing, and more. This lab is also home to 18 Mac Studio workstations with the same software as the VAPA Multimedia Lab in Columbine Hall.
Margot Lane Studio
The Margot Lane Studio is a 2,000 square foot rehearsal room for many ensembles, recordings, film scoring and other collaborative uses. With pristine acoustics, this room boasts large wall-sized windows with astounding views of Pikes Peak.
Visual Resource Center
The Visual Resource Center houses two professional Epson Stylus Pro printers, a graphic arts scanner, and two iMac desktop computers - both with Adobe Creative Cloud. Students may also check out manual cameras, dSLR and mirrorless digital cameras, microphones, lighting equipment, audio recorders, digital projectors, tripods, and GoPro and video camcorders for course-related projects. Located in Columbine Hall.
Recording Studio & Audio Laboratory
The recording studio and audio laboratory is a state-of-the-art facility wired directly into the Margo Lane Rehearsal Hall, the Chapman Foundations Recital Hall, the Osborne Theatre and the Shockley Zalabak Theater. This facility serves a broad array of functions within the VAPA Department including audio recording engineering, sound design, film scoring, and multimedia production.
Sculpture Studio
The Visual Arts Sculpture Studio is a multi-use warehouse building located near the Ent Center for the Arts. It holds a woodshop (image), a metalwork room with welding facilities, materials for use in casting and ceramics, and two clean rooms for installation.
Shockley-Zalabak Theater
Seating 757, this is the largest venue in the Ent Center for the Arts, designed to feel intimate despite its capacity and incorporating technically advanced features to showcase a diverse array of events, from dance to orchestra to choral performances and more.
Practice rooms
The music wing houses several practice rooms and small rehearsal studios constructed with high level acoustic isolation.
Music program classrooms
Music Program classrooms in the Ent Center for the Arts are dedicated to musicians of every discipline. The rooms feature state-of-the-art technology and computer workstations.
Lockers
In the Music wing of the Ent Center we have hallways of lockers for student instruments.
Heller Center Gallery Space
Within the grounds of the UCCS Heller Center for the Arts & Humanities is a small gallery space that hosts exhibits of student work as well as other curated collections. Through internships with the Heller Center, MSGP students have the opportunity to design and curate entire exhibits based on their own research.
Darkroom
A fully functional black & white photo darkroom is attached to our Photography studio in Columbine Hall.
Design Studio
One of the Visual Art classrooms in Columbine Hall dedicated to foundations and design.