Promoting Student Engagement and Creativity by Infusing Art Across the Curriculum: The Arts Integration Initiative at Oklahoma City University

According to a survey by Hart Research Associates commissioned by the Association of American Colleges and Universities, 70 percent of employers want colleges to place more emphasis on creativity and innovation as essential learning outcomes. One of the reasons, as David Kearns explains, is that “the real challenge of today's economy is not in making things but in producing creative ideas. Today, the race goes not just to the swift, but to the inventive, the resourceful, the curious” (p. vi). Numerous scholars, like Sir Ken Robinson, Daniel H. Pink, Eric Liu and Scott Noppe–Brandon, and David W. Oxtoby, have called for greater attention to promoting and teaching creativity. This article describes an innovative program at Oklahoma City University (OCU) that grouped faculty from across disciplines and provided them with training on how to integrate the arts into their teaching. In order to encourage creativity among both faculty and students, we focused our efforts on enhancing engagement in aesthetic activities.

Students attending OCU expect to engage in significant, transformative learning experiences that they could not have at other institutions. OCU is a private, comprehensive university with 3,800 students enrolled (over half are undergraduates) that offers various courses of study in arts and sciences, music, theater, law, nursing, religion, arts and dance management, and business. OCU's arts programs attract national recognition for educating, training, and developing both practitioners and audiences for the arts. The university has produced numerous Broadway performers and Tony Award recipients and nominees such as Kristin Chenoweth and Kelli O'Hara, Grammy Award winners like Leona Mitchell of the Metropolitan Opera, and Emmy Award winners such as Ron Raines. K. C. Patrick, editor of Dance Magazine, named OCU's dance school as the best preparatory dance program in the nation, a program that produces and sends more college–educated Rockettes to Radio City Music Hall than any other university.

Based on this tradition of excellence in the performing arts and its commitment to promoting creativity, OCU received a $4.6 million grant from the Robert L. and Ruby Priddy Trust in 2005 to infuse the arts across its curriculum. The five–year grant provided funding for faculty development, arts outreach into the community, and student scholarships. As I will describe here, the arts across the curriculum initiative focused on designing and offering innovative courses and promoting creativity through aesthetic engagement among both students and teachers.

Program Structure and Faculty Development

In order to propel the initiative, OCU first needed a program that would prepare and develop innovative faculty leaders who would integrate art into their teaching. Institutions of higher education like North Carolina State University and Miami University (Ohio) have demonstrated that faculty–led learning community programs can be an effective way to revise and integrate innovative elements into curricula and sustain initiatives at universities, as reported by Virginia Lee and Roxanne Reed and her co–presenters, respectively. According to Milt Cox, prototypical faculty learning communities are multidisciplinary groups of 6–15 faculty, typically either cohort– or topic–based, which “engage in an active, collaborative, yearlong program with a curriculum about enhancing teaching and learning and with frequent seminars and activities that provide learning, development, the scholarship of teaching, and community building” (p. 8).

OCU adopted faculty learning communities as a vehicle for faculty development and initiated the Priddy Fellows Learning Community program in 2006. The mission of the Priddy Fellows Learning Community included supporting the scholarly pursuit of excellence in teaching and learning, advocating arts integration across the curriculum through the exploration of new and alternative methods of course design and disciplinary expertise, and acting as agents of change within the fellows’ academic departments, the university, and the broader scholarly community.

OCU's Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning (CETL) and Fine Arts Institute (FAI) provided leadership for the arts integration initiative. CETL and FAI invited full–time faculty to apply for the Priddy Fellows Learning Community, and eight to ten faculty members from across the disciplines (biology, law, psychology, nursing, philosophy, history, English, religion, business, sociology, and so on) were selected annually for fellowships to participate in this intensive, yearlong faculty learning community. OCU's Priddy Fellows met weekly during the spring and fall semesters to examine research on teaching and learning, explore ways to improve their teaching, promote creativity, and utilize appropriate technology into their courses. At the end of each spring semester, members of the Priddy Fellows Learning Community participated in a weeklong retreat. During each of these annual retreats, members of the Priddy Fellows Learning Community traveled to a different venue, including Santa Fe, Chicago, San Francisco, and New York City, to participate in unique arts–immersion experiences. For example, during their week in San Francisco, the Priddy Fellows participated in a series of workshops with facilitators from the San Francisco Symphony's Keeping Score Music Education program, engaged in spirited conversations with arts education scholar Elliot Eisner, and after a symphony concert met backstage with conductor Michael Tilson Thomas. The following year, Priddy Fellows travelled to New York City, where they explored the Capacities for Imaginative Learning at the Lincoln Center Institute and discussed aesthetic education theory with philosopher Maxine Greene. Just a few of their numerous adventures in New York City included a walking tour of Harlem, attending several Broadway productions, and visiting the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

In addition to the intensive faculty learning community program, Priddy Fellows and other OCU faculty members participated in numerous faculty development activities offered right on the OCU campus. Visionary scholars and leaders in creativity and teaching visited the campus, stimulating and stretching the imaginations of our faculty. Guest speakers included Sir Ken Robinson (author of Out of Our Minds: Learning to be Creative), John Cimino (CEO of Creative Leaps International), Dee Fink (author of Creating Significant Learning Experiences), Ken Bain (author of What the Best College Teachers Do), Susan Wolcott (scholar on critical thinking), Randy Bass (leader in the scholarship of teaching and learning), and Mike Wesch (2009 CASE National Professor of the Year). In addition, teaching artists from the Lincoln Center Institute in New York City visited OCU's campus to present aesthetic education workshops on the nine Capacities for Imaginative Learning—which are noticing deeply, embodying, questioning, making connections, identifying patterns, exhibiting empathy, creating meaning, taking action, and reflecting/assessing. During the grant period, over one–third of OCU's full–time faculty voluntarily participated in faculty development activities that focused on arts integration and creative teaching.

Arts–Integrated Courses

Each Priddy Fellow taught (or team–taught) a new or redesigned course that incorporated the arts. They each received a course release to allow time and energy to devote to designing their special, arts–integrated courses. Priddy Fellows received additional support and resources: $5,000 stipends, new laptops, funding for course materials and learning activities, and opportunities to travel to conferences to present their scholarship of teaching and learning projects related to their arts–integrated courses. Over a four–year period, 35 OCU faculty members participated in the Priddy Fellows Learning Community program. Thirty arts–integrated courses were created and offered by Priddy Fellows (several were team–taught), including 12 courses offered in the General Education curriculum.

What follows are brief descriptions of four of these arts–integrated courses.

Program Assessment and Learning Outcomes

These efforts have translated into significant levels of student engagement. Students have recognized the effectiveness of the active, creative learning environments at Oklahoma City University. According to data collected in the spring of 2010 from the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) conducted at OCU, seniors (most of these students arrived as first–year students in the year that the arts integration initiative commenced) reported that they made class presentations and attended art performances at a rate higher than the national average within our Carnegie classification. In addition, NSSE results from 2006 to 2010 show that both OCU first–year students and seniors annually reported that they attended an art exhibit, play, dance recital, concert, or other performance at rates significantly higher than the national average.

Further, learners have responded enthusiastically to the arts–integrated courses and want more classes like them. In a random survey of OCU students conducted by CETL, 97 percent of respondents stated that they would be interested in taking another arts–integrated course. The survey revealed that students clearly recognized these courses were unconventional and nontraditional. Students noticed and appreciated pedagogical changes that enhanced their learning experiences. For instance, two of the students said:

Another student commented how the teacher was willing to relinquish control to the students, and that, consequently, gave the learner more opportunities to practice and develop organizational and communication skills than previously experienced.

Frequent assessments also were conducted among faculty involved in the initiative. One unexpected outcome of the Priddy Fellows Learning Community was that it promoted a greater sense of pedagogical humility among faculty participants. In the process of being immersed in the arts and also exposed to new theories on teaching, Priddy Fellows were stretched and taken far outside their comfort zones—they experienced the strange, often uncomfortable experience of learning “new stuff” once again. By doing so, they developed both disciplinary humility and greater empathy for their students.

Inspired by the success of the Priddy Fellows Learning Community, other faculty groups have formed at OCU. CETL currently sponsors nine faculty learning communities, each with a unique focus (e.g., arts integration, scholarship of teaching and learning, effective teaching practices, teaching with technology). All of these faculty learning communities provide unique opportunities for faculty to critically reflect on their teaching, discuss, study, and share best practices.

Conclusion: Lessons Learned

Although securing a grant to fund an initiative like this one is a worthy goal, even without significant funding institutions can still implement elements of a program like ours. For example, a faculty learning community program can operate either with or without stipends, funding for food and books, or course releases. Having resources to attract and reward faculty can certainly help enhance a faculty learning community program; however, I think many faculty members who are passionate about teaching and learning and the particular topic will sign up for a faculty learning community that interests them even without extensive enticements. Still, providing incentives and rewards for the facilitators of these learning communities should be a priority for program administrators. Naturally, it is also important to choose facilitators who have both the energy and the organizational skills needed to lead faculty learning communities on your campus.

Another focus should be to develop relationships with community partners who share goals congruent with your initiative. By forming these synergistic partnerships, unique opportunities can be produced and resources shared. For example, we formed a partnership with the Oklahoma City Museum of Art (OKCMOA) and teamed up for several programs as part of our arts integration initiative. When the museum hosted the Roman Art from the Louvre exhibit in 2008, OCU and OKCMOA jointly collaborated to organize a special weeklong event. During the designated week, all OCU faculty, staff, and students were granted free admission to attend the special Roman art exhibit. As a partner, OCU paid a modest promotional fee to the museum. Some faculty took their classes to the museum on field trips. Museum curators and staff visited our campus to make presentations on and promote the exhibit. Because of the high participation rate achieved during this inaugural event, OCU continues to annually sponsor a Week at the Museum of Art for the entire campus community. Furthermore, based on the successful results from this event and its partnership with OCU, OKC–MOA now offers a month–long program each year that provides free museum admission for all college students across the state of Oklahoma.

By engaging in this arts integration initiative and the activities outlined here, OCU has created a campus culture that values both critical reflection and the sharing of innovative approaches to teaching and learning. Not only is there a stronger sense of community, but also a spirit of creativity pervades the campus among its faculty, staff, and students.