The Linda Berry Stein College of Fine Arts created two schools within the college, Jacksonville University Provost Chris Sapienza announced July 6.
The Stein College added the School of Performing Arts and the School of Art & Design.
“This decision helps sustain our long and successful traditional fine arts education history and remain a relevant, contemporary and forward-looking institution,” Sapienza said in a news release.
Programs within the School of Art & Design will occupy space in the university’s developing STEAM (Science, Technology, Arts & Mathematics) Institute. Students in graphic design, animation, film and media arts will learn with their peers in engineering, physics and computer science.
The STEAM Institute will offer visual and media arts learning spaces including an animation studio, film and media studio, film edit suite, a virtual reality studio and media screening facility.
The programs will add to the existing School of Performing Arts spaces that include Terry Concert Hall, Swisher Theater, Brest Dance Pavilion and the Phillips Fine Arts Building, which houses the Alexander Brest Gallery and Blackbox Theater.
The Stein College has offered almost six decades of award-winning arts education since being established by the late Chancellor Emerita Frances Bartlett Kinne.
In 2018, the university named the college the Linda Berry Stein College of Fine Arts in recognition of one of the largest gifts the institution had received, a multiyear, multimillion-dollar contribution from alumna Linda Berry Stein and her husband, David Stein.
That investment will provide for the Stein Artist Scholars Endowment, endowed “Steiner” student scholarships in perpetuity, further renovation of the Phillips Fine Arts Building — including an outdoor study and creative collaboration plaza adjacent to the arts complex — and will create the Linda Berry Stein Fine Arts Student of the Year award.
The gift and its legacy continued the relationship between the university and Linda Berry Stein, who was one of Kinne’s proteges, a Miss Jacksonville University while attending school and a member of the university’s board of trustees after graduation.
Stein College graduates have won Tony Awards on Broadway, Emmy Awards on television and recognition for composition, music performance, visual arts and choreography.
Notable Dolphins include actor, theater director and singer Terrence Mann; the late actor, comedian and radio personality Jay Thomas; Jennifer Pascual, director of music at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City; and internationally known choreographer William Forsythe.
Stein College also is recognized for its glass blowing program. Artwork by JU students and faculty is displayed at the Times-Union Center for the Performing Arts, the Cummer Museum of Art & Gardens and Jacksonville International Airport, as well as within the university’s public art collection on campus.