Surveying the Landscape: Arts Integration at Research Universities
We are thrilled to announce a new publication in partnership with ArtsEngine at the University of Michigan. Working closely with The Alliance for the Arts in Research Universities and funded by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, ArtsEngine has created the first comprehensive guide to best practices in the integration of arts practice in U.S. research universities. This guide identifies models, obstacles, implementation strategies, costs, and impact on students and faculty as well as on research, practice, and teaching in other knowledge areas.
Surveying the Landscape: Arts Integration at Research Universities is an initial investigation of practices in arts integration at research universities observed between 2012-2014. This study highlights aspirational models and presents an overall guide to current practices linking the arts to other learning areas. It examines the increasingly prevalent integration of arts practice and study at research universities and was in response to growing recognition of the value of arts integration practices across the landscape of higher education.
Using a mixed methodological approach favoring ethnography, researchers examined 46 higher educational institutions in the U.S. and UK through interviews with 965 individuals, including university administrators, faculty, staff, and students. By nature qualitative rather than quantitative, these narratives form the basis of this study, providing a subjective overview of arts integration in research universities as seen through the eyes of the interview participants. This project is among the first such study specifically concerned with the arts in higher education, making it a groundbreaking work of potential value to future arts researchers. Arts integration can demonstrate potential benefit for all participants, whether from the arts or other academic areas. There is a growing prevalence of arts-integrated scholarly activity and increasing institutional recognition of the arts can be viewed as valuable to the overall mission of the university.
Surveying the Landscape: Arts Integration at Research Universities is freely available to read online in HathiTrust, and print copies of the book may be purchased through Amazon.