Dear School of Art, We, the signed undergraduate students below, are addressing issues we see within the

School of Art and the College of Design, Architecture, Art, and Planning. Our experience in this school over the last four years has been less than satisfactory. Therefore, we have composed this letter as an opening remark to initiate a larger dialogue to recognize insufficient features of the School of Art and identify underlying problems, with the mission of improving our institution for current and future students. We are conducting ongoing, quantitative and anecdotal research into the Fine Arts Foundations and Senior Thesis courses to support our concerns and recommendations and to determine whether they are still relevant. Thus far, the findings are supportive. Our greatest concern, which has been partially addressed, is the subpar education received in Foundations studios, particularly from graduate student teachers. When we tell DAAP students outside of the School of Art, they are astounded and cannot fathom Foundations being taught by graduate students. Foundations is supposed to be a time for growth, but instead our growth was stunted as we struggled against our education. We find this unacceptable. The adjustments to Foundations have been beneficial, yet do not go far enough. A primary inhibitor to the School of Art is its lack of identity. When students apply to the school, they do not necessarily know what the school stands for or will provide. This is not an accident. DAAP sees the School of Art as a low performing school, the administration is not completely present in our school, some faculty see our school as a traditional institution, other faculty see our school as training artists for galleries, and the students are equally divided and confused. Single solutions are neither necessary nor ideal, yet our School of Art identity crisis must be acknowledged and considered at all levels. We propose a direct discussion concerning this problem. Further issues we wish to draw attention to follow:

Low retention rates Condescension from other DAAP schools students and faculty Faculty infighting And socioeconomic differences among students, particularly between disciplines

These problems cultivate a culture of negativity and alienation. The result of this is pervasive low motivation and morale among both students and professors resulting in low work ethic among students and lack of confidence in our work.

Our mission is to promote a higher quality education within the School of Art and to improve the overall quality of DAAP. We recognize and wish to draw attention to the potential of the School of Art and College of DAAP. We wish to gain credibility and respect amongst our peers within the college. We believe that interdisciplinary collaboration with our colleagues will lead to higher quality education. In addition to closed-door, faculty-only retreats, we propose this dialogue occur as a series of town hall-style meetings open to the entire DAAP community in order to publicly and transparently discuss potential solutions and reforms. This will allow for increased student participation in the future of our school. Several major concerns have been addressed, but the majority remain open issues. Over the last year, we have created extensive recommendations and solutions to these concerns. We will be happy to present them in one of these public meetings. Thank you for your time and we hope to hear from you. Sincerely, John Manibusan Alex McClay Carmen Ostermann Philip Schaefer Emily Schmitt Drew Yakscoe Please feel free to contact us at: ostermcd@mail.uc.edu schaefpp@mail.uc.edu