GREENVILLE, S.C.\u2014The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation has awarded Furman University an $800,000 grant in support of the school\u2019s new initiative to enrich its fine arts program.<\/p>\n
The Furman Fine Arts Initiative, which was launched in November 2011 with a $2 million grant from The Duke Endowment, seeks to enhance and expand the university\u2019s programs in music, art and theatre.\u00a0 The initiative includes a collaborative partnership with the Peace Center for the Performing Arts in downtown Greenville.<\/p>\n
According to John Beckford, Furman\u2019s vice president for academic affairs and dean, the Mellon grant will help fund the appointment of three new tenure-track professors\u2014two in music and one in arts administration.\u00a0 The latter faculty position will be in the Department of Business and Accounting.<\/p>\n
\u201cI am thrilled the Mellon Foundation has chosen to support Furman\u2019s efforts to enhance its arts program and become more involved in the creative life of the community,\u201d said president Rod Smolla.\u00a0 \u201cCoupled with the recent gift from The Duke Endowment, this grant will help the university build upon its strong reputation in the arts and expand its community outreach.\u201d<\/p>\n
Beckford said the new faculty positions will provide expertise in lyric theatre (opera and musical theater), musicology and nonprofit business environments such as arts administration.\u00a0 The positions could be filled as early as this fall.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese new positions will support our effort to increase student enrollment in the arts, further enhance the university\u2019s fine arts programs, and increase our presence in downtown Greenville through involvement with the Peace Center and other community arts organizations,\u201d Beckford said.<\/p>\n
Furman currently offers majors in music, church music, music education, music theory, composition, performance, art and theatre arts.\u00a0 Beckford said about 20 percent of the student body at Furman participates in the arts curriculum.<\/p>\n
For more information, contact Furman\u2019s News and Media Relations office at 864-294-3107.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation has awarded Furman an $800,000 grant in support of the school\u2019s new initiative to enrich its fine arts program. \u00a0According to John Beckford, the university’s vice president for academic affairs and dean, the Mellon grant will help fund the appointment of three new tenure-track professors\u2014two in music and one in arts administration.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":265,"featured_media":318,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,45,39,41],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-317","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-academic-department-page","category-art","category-music","category-theatre-arts"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/317","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/265"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=317"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/317\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/318"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=317"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=317"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=317"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}