The Cal State LA College of Arts & Letters transforms lives and sustains thriving communities and cultures. We develop and amplify our students’ unique talents, diverse life experiences, and intellects through the study and practice of the Arts and Humanities so that they can tell meaningful stories, forge their professional pathways, and inspire their communities.
Mission Statement
The Cal State LA College of Arts & Letters transforms lives and sustains thriving communities and cultures. We develop and amplify our students’ unique talents, diverse life experiences, and intellects through the study and practice of the Arts and Humanities so that they can tell meaningful stories, forge their professional pathways, and inspire their communities.
Vision Statement
Through the work of our students and faculty, we will be – and be seen as – the creative, intellectual, and cultural heart of Cal State LA and the Los Angeles region. We will build bridges both locally and globally between university and community, students and careers, learning and action.
Values
- Academic Excellence – Maintaining currency in our disciplines, holding students and faculty to high standards of academic rigor
- Community – Building a sense of community and collaboration within the College, across the university, and within our surrounding LA community
- Creativity – Supporting the generation of new ideas, knowledges, and modes of expression
- Diversity – Understanding and appreciating the value of different cultural backgrounds, ethnicities, genders, sexualities, classes, experiences, perspectives, and abilities
- Generosity – Paying forward what we have learned and achieved by supporting others to do the same
- Inclusiveness – Welcoming each person’s unique identity, human experience, individual voice, and creative expression
- Interdisciplinarity – Encouraging collaboration and linkages across disciplines in scholarship and teaching; helping students explore different paths and possibilities
- Passion and commitment – Dedication; going all-in to help students succeed
- Public Engagement – Recognizing that arts and humanities have a place in the public sphere, especially in engaging with and building communities
- Social Justice – Giving students the creative, critical, and analytical tools to be civic thinkers and enact social change
Last Update: February 21, 2019 View here: Strategic Plan
College of Arts and Letters
Goals, 2008/09-2012/13
GOAL 1: Create greater incentives for departmental collaborations and interdisciplinarity (University Goals 1.1, 1.2, 1.6, 4.1, 4.3, 4.6)
- Strategy 1: Foster collaboration between departments within the College of A&L (and across “arts” and “letters).
- Create more courses that are co-taught by faculty from different departments.
- Increase collaboration among faculty from different departments on research and outreach activities.
- Have at least one event each year combining media, composition, commercial music, and theatre.
- Implement the Spanish Journalism program.
- Create intra-college learning communities
- Create more interdisciplinary minors (along the lines of the Comparative Linguistics minor)
- Develop an Arts & Letters Faculty Lounge
- Develop more interdepartmental events that involve students
- Initiate interdepartmental retreats to discuss common interests
- Increase the number of scholarly/creative activities that have joint authors/ creators from different departments.
- Encourage collaboration of under/graduate students from differing departments in the college.
- Strategy 2: Foster collaboration between departments in differing colleges and centers for global (e.g., Chinese, Japanese, Korean) studies
- Increase the number of cross-listed courses
- In Music, emphasize cross-cultural studies
- Re-examine the question of a language requirement for Humanities and Social Sciences students
- Initiate student exchange opportunities through CILECT (Conseil International de Liaison des Ecoles de Cinéma et de Télévision)
- Host interdisciplinary events in Student Housing
- Strategy 3: Initiate conversations with Natural and Social Sciences faculty and administration regarding the organizational home of History and Area Studies to Arts and Letters to encourage more interdisciplinary interactions.
- Completed in 2008/09. Ethnic Studies areas did not engage in formal discussion with Arts and Letters. History held an advisory vote and did not recommend joining Arts and Letters.
- Strategy 4: Invite scholars/teachers from Universities around LA (connected to the School of Arts and Letters) for talks; meet and greet, in the company of students for interdisciplinary conversations
- Increase the number of annual scholarly or creative conferences hosted by A&L Departments
- Invite artists, musicians, actors, writers to mentor seniors and produce a public event (along the lines of “Short Orders”)
- Increase the number of other creative and intellectual types of events
- Strategy 5: Create new tenure-track faculty positions in interdisciplinary humanities
- While this strategy needs to be placed on hold, we note that many new faculty with interdisciplinary interests were hired during 2008/09
- Create opportunities for faculty with interdisciplinary interests to apply for grants, develop course, collaborate between department, etc.
GOAL 2: Develop faculty opportunities for creative activity, research, curriculum development and innovative teaching (University Goals 4.6, 5.2, 5.3, 5.5, 1.3, 2.2, 2.3)
- Strategy 1: Implement a model with more departmental freedom for scheduling faculty workload in order to lower workload and, as a result, increase our ability to recruit more highly qualified faculty and graduate students
- Increase number of large lectures with grad student led discussion groups to reduce faculty teaching load
- Reward departments that meet SFR, FTES, and FTEF goals
- Strategy 2: Increase the proportion of tenure-track faculty in the College of Arts and Letters
- This strategy has been met, in part through hiring 16 new TT faculty for 2009/10 and, unfortunately, through reduction in lecturer faculty numbers
- Raise proportion of TT faculty to 70% by 2013/14
- Increase significantly the percentage of TT faculty members with private offices by 2013/14
- Strategy 3: Create more opportunities to showcase faculty creative activity and research
- Increase the number of shows/exhibitions in the Luckman Performing Arts complex
- Create more ongoing lecture series
- Increase the percentage of faculty who update their publications for the College and departmental web-sites
- Create one new annual symposium to showcase faculty work
- Reduce number of events and create bigger “showcase” events [diversification of events provides more and differing opportunities for participation. When documenting our successes we need to claim all of the activities sponsored through the centers. Can there be a separate point somewhere that speaks to increase activities and showcasing the varying centers in the college; especially after our recent reviews?]
- Strategy 4: Increase support for faculty to develop innovative curriculum and improve teaching
- Increase team-teaching
- Increase innovative curriculum proposals such as translation/interpretation and reward faculty who develop innovative curriculum
- Increase number of faculty who receive re-assigned time to develop innovative curriculum (will be postponed until later in the plan)
GOAL 3: Build community among current and past students (University Goals 4.1, 4.3, 4.4, 4.5, 4.6, 5.1)
- Strategy 1: Increase networking opportunities for students (e.g., creation of e-mail, face book, online/virtual communities)
- Increase number of students and alums on College and Departmental/ Program Facebook pages
- Increase the use of other Social Networks—including Twitter
- Increase the number of alumni who receive our e-newsletter
- Increase the number of alumni who attend College events
- Increase the number of alumni scholarships
- Have freshmen and other student mixers in collaboration with ASI and other student groups
- Strategy 2: Create more opportunities for shared insights, tips, strategies towards progress and success (within the program and areas of chosen professions/activities)
- Create a discussion board on the A&L web-site
- Have alumni teachers come back to speak with students who plan to be teachers
- Organize departmental alumni days with panels to share experience with current students
- Increase the number of no-host events held on-campus where faculty alumni and current students mingle and discuss their professions
GOAL 4: Increase Outreach and Community Engagement (University Goals 3.1, 3.6, 4.7, 5.1, 5.5)
- Strategy 1: Expand after school programs, workshops, Master classes, tutoring
- (Mostly deferred until later in the five-year plan)
- Work with Stern/MASS high school, new performance arts school in downtown Los Angeles, to build awareness of opportunities
- Visit more high schools and community colleges
- Strategy 2: Extend more invitations to lectures, exhibits, performances
- Designate VIP events and invite more VIPs to designated events
- Hire an intern to build our alumni contact list
- Extend more invitations to local communities and community councils (e.g., East LA, Alhambra, Monterey Park, South Pasadena, Pasadena)
- Double size of mailing list (note: built from almost 0 to 5000 during the first year of plan; goal to add at least 1000 new names per year)
- Increase size of non-Cal State LA audience each year
- Increase outreach to community colleges and high schools
- Strategy 3: Focus on building bridges with the communities in our service area
- Increase the number of high school and community college students and faculty who come to campus
- Increase outreach to Stern/MASS and create opportunities for those students to do arts and letters classes
- Form more advisory councils for specific programs (e.g., Television/ Film)
- Increase the number of program to program meetings between Arts and Letters and community college partners
- Increase activities of the Events, Publicity, and Outreach function through hiring a full-time staff member (2008) and hiring work-study students (2009) to work with the Coordinator.
- Strategy 4: More widely publicize students showcases (performance, art, music, writing)
- Increase the number of attendees (on- and off-campus) at Arts and Letters events
- Package tickets so that those interested can buy a “season ticket”
- Increase advertisement and event listing in LA Times, Pasadena Star News, LA Weekly, and San Gabriel Valley news outlets
- Increase advertising in community college and high school newspapers
- Increase radio ads
- Name individual performances rather than give seasonal names (e.g., “Winter Dance Concert” too generic)
- Recreate a student “passport” program in which students get stamps to prove attendance at Arts and Letters events
- Increase the number and more widely advertise top student concerts, exhibitions, lectures, etc.
- Events, Publicity and Outreach Coordinator will work with campus PR to increase press releases
- Strategy 5: Increase public marketing for programs
- (Note, Strategy 4 also covers this idea)
- Events, Publicity and Outreach Coordinator will create a marketing plan that includes multilingual marketplace of LA
- Create radio ads for NPR stations, KPFK, KUCI
- Increase the multimedia aspects of our College and departmental web-sites (e.g., add music, more examples of art work, dance and theatre clips, etc.)
- Update our print materials
- Strategy 6: Improve Public Relations area of Communication Studies
- Recruit more faculty and students
- Create more internship opportunities
- Increase the number of Cal State LA related PR projects undertaken by students
- Create a pre-test and post-test assessment of the Public Relations program —Events, Publicity, and Outreach Coordinator will increase the number of paid and unpaid internships available.
GOAL 5: Expand the community of individuals, foundations, and corporations who support the College of Arts and Letters (University Goals 6.1, 6.2, 4.4)
- Strategy 1: Build a college alumni database by discipline
- Include alumni contact and career/study information on grad checks
- Run an entire list of Cal State LA alumni and systematically review for current contact info.
- Develop an “alumni reaching alumni” program in which alums are encouraged to bring more alums into our e-newsletter list (5000+ name list built by Summer 2009) [You might want to include reference to the current success with building such a data base -----Noelle’s position]
- Strategy 2: Launch more annual A&L Alumni Reunions (e.g., by Department)
- Create more opportunities to celebrate alumni accomplishments
- Explore the possibility of creating a public fundraising campaign
- Seek opportunities to engage corporations, foundations, and community
agencies in mutually beneficial ways
GOAL 6: Revitalize and establish more community spaces; make better use of space (University Goals 4.1, 4.3, 4.5, 4.8,
- Strategy 1: Make the Music Courtyard more inviting (more tables, umbrellas, better evening lighting, etc. establishing a space that is more relaxing, “meet and greet”)
- Patio tables and umbrellas were purchased in summer 2008
- Dead palm removed 2009
- Extra cleaning begun Fall 2008
- Held Freshman Mixer in Oct 2008 & 2009 in Courtyard; held “Finesse de la Nuit” in Nov 2008 and will hold in Feb 2010.
- Increase usage for other events
- Make this a non-smoking area
- Develop proposal for naming the Courtyard
- Reduce LACHSA use of the space as they acquire their own building
- Strategy 2: Upgrade the Fine Arts Gallery and Courtyard
- Work on gift to make this possible
- Strategy 3: Transform an existing space to A&L faculty lounge
- Strategy 4: Provide dedicated lounge rooms for students in each department
- Created a lounge in Philosophy
- If we acquire LDS Building it will have a student/faculty lounge
- Strategy 5: Centralize Humanities in a cluster of buildings
- Move the Photo Lab to the Fine Arts Bldg as soon as possible
- Strategy 6: Improve the classroom environment
- Improve media and arts classrooms (Music 117 already supplied with 29 keyboards; Music 220 has open lab hours; Music 214 has new floor)
- Plan in place for Music 149 when funds become available; plan in place for King Hall 5th floor AV classroom; plan in place to take over EEP area in Fine Arts; plan in place to reclaim second sewing lab
- Acquire LDB Building—will create a new sound stage and improve faculty office environment in the Music Bldg and King Hall
- Strategy 7: Extend the number of private faculty offices to ensure student confidentiality
- LDS Bldg acquisition will provide some opportunity to reach this strategic goal.
- Strategy 8: Work with the Library to develop exhibit space that would feature, in part, Arts and Letters
- Form an Arts and Letters Exhibition Committee
GOAL 7: Build exemplary, distinctive graduate programs (University Goals 1.1, 1,3, 1.6)
- Strategy 1: Obtain more funding for Graduate Students
- Seek additional external support for graduate fellowships
- Seek to include grad student support in any foundation requests
- Strategy 2: Offer more graduate fellowships and fee waivers
- Propose fee waiver program for two departments in 2008/09
- Strategy 3: Offer more Teaching Assistantships upon acceptance of well-qualified graduate students.
- All Departments should map all GTA, GA, and ISA opportunities for the year and communicate these to incoming as well as continuing grad students
- Strategy 4: Submit the MA in Liberal Studies for approval by 2012.
- Strategy 5: Increase the library’s holdings in Arts and Letters, including increasing journal subscriptions
- Must be postponed due to library budgetary cuts, although we are trying to acquire ArtSTOR
- Collaborate with Library to increase humanities holdings
- Work with Library to expand our access to neighboring research libraries
GOAL 8: Improve equipment and software as a means to support program quality, student attainment of educational and career goals, and creation of original work (University Goals 1.1, 1.2, 1.3, 1.4, 1.5, 1.6, 3.2, 3.3, 3.4, 3.6, 4.1, 4.2, 4.3, 4.5, 4.6, 4.8, 5.1, 5.2, 5.5, 6.3)
- Strategy 1: Request appropriate start-up funding for faculty members annually
- Received over $100,000 in faculty equipment and software requests for 2009/10
- Acquiring (2009) box office and scheduling software for State Playhouse operation
- Strategy 2: Develop sustainable funding mechanisms for Arts and Letters labs
- Acquire appropriate materials through Instructionally-Related Activities fund
- Participate in CSU Entertainment Industry Initiative when in resumes
- Develop a mechanism to pay for equipment maintenance
- Implement course-based fees when there are no other options to support labs
GOAL 9: Assess all programs; seek external accreditation for all programs where this is possible (University Goals 1.4, 1.5, 3.2, 3.3, 3.4, 3.6, 4.2, 4.7, 5.25.3, 5.5, 6.1, 6.4)
- Strategy 1: Develop a plan for NAST and NASD accreditation by 2013
- Form a committee in TAD
- Begin to participate in KCACDF by 2011/12
- Strategy 2: Develop a best approach to television/film and broadcasting accreditation
- Charge Communication Studies (including Television/Film) to review appropriate accrediting agency by 2011/12
- Strategy 3: Earn NASAD re-accreditation in 2010
- Strategy 4: All departments discuss assessment outcomes regularly and seek to improve programs based on assessment data
- Modern Languages and Literatures will continue its Program Review in 2009/10
- English Department has analyzed data on remedial English and will seek external funding to improve practices during 2009/10, collaborating with other CSU campuses
- Philosophy Department is considering assessment of Philosophy 160
- Theatre Arts and Dance will link exploration of NAST and NASD accreditation to its program review self-study which it will initiate in 2010/11.
Art department preparing for NASD accreditation visit in 2010, ongoing meetings about assessment.
- View Here: Mission, Vision, & Values
For a complete listing please visit the Campus Directory.
Arts & Letters Office of the Dean
MUSIC 228
Phone: (323) 343-4001
Fax: (323) 343-6440
| Dr. Stephen M. Trzaskoma, Dean | MUS 228 |
(323) 343-4001 |
|
Flora Saavedra-Hernandez, Assistant to the Dean |
MUS 227 |
(323) 343-5639 |
|
Claudia Chan, Administrative Support Coordinator |
MUS 228 |
(323) 343-4001 |
|
Iris Chu, Communication Specialist |
MUS 221 |
(323) 343-4009 |
Arts & Letters Associate Dean’s Office
MUSIC 230
Phone: (323) 343-4004
|
MUS 231 |
(323) 343-5626 |
|
|
Leticia Ramirez, Assistant to the Associate Dean |
MUS 230 |
(323) 343-4004 |
Fiscal and Resource Office
MUSIC 221
Phone: (323) 343-4007
| Resource Manager, Vacant | MUS 232 |
(323) 343-4006 |
| Sylvia Ramirez | MUS 223 |
(323) 343-4007 |
|
Men Tran, College ITC |
MUS 04 | (323) 343-4044 |
|
Alejandro Trejo, College ITC |
MUS 03 | (323) 343-4233 |
A&L Productions
TA 204
Phone: (323) 343-4133
Fax: (323) 343-5565
|
Elizabeth Pietrzak, College Technical Director |
TA 204 |
(323) 343-4132 |
|
Tim Jones, Lighting Technician |
TA 202 |
(323) 343-4126 |
|
Bruce Zwinge, Costume Shop Supervisor |
TA 206 |
(323) 343-4125 |
| Rico Garcia, Audio Technitian | TA 201 | (323) 343-5564 |
Advisement Center
ALadvise@calstatela.edu
MUSIC 209
Phone: (323) 343-4015
|
(323) 343-5061 |
|
|
Yajaira Garcia, Lead Advisor |
(323) 343-4108 |
|
(323) 343-4080 |
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|
(323) 343-4109 |
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|
(323) 343-4107 |
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|
(323) 343-4106 |
Departments and Centers
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College of Arts & Letters Social Media Directory
View Here: Staff
View Here: A&L Faculty Governance Guidelines