Why Study Art?

The Art department's mission is to train artists, art historians, and visual arts administrators, as well as to provide service courses for non-art majors. Through our courses, we aspire to build an appreciation for the rich interchange of images and ideas that can happen between art and other academic disciplines. Our graduates in art have been encouraged to consider their future professional role in the context of both the contemporary world and the historical world. Besides a reverence for art history, they have been taught appropriate skills of mind, hand, and eye. They have been helped to find the next steps in their life journey, and have been challenged to be the best they can be in their chosen specialty.... [-]

Why Study Art?

The Art department's mission is to train artists, art historians, and visual arts administrators, as well as to provide service courses for non-art majors. Through our courses, we aspire to build an appreciation for the rich interchange of images and ideas that can happen between art and other academic disciplines. Our graduates in art have been encouraged to consider their future professional role in the context of both the contemporary world and the historical world. Besides a reverence for art history, they have been taught appropriate skills of mind, hand, and eye. They have been helped to find the next steps in their life journey, and have been challenged to be the best they can be in their chosen specialty.... [-]

Why Study Art?

The Art department's mission is to train artists, art historians, and visual arts administrators, as well as to provide service courses for non-art majors. Through our courses, we aspire to build an appreciation for the rich interchange of images and ideas that can happen between art and other academic disciplines. Our graduates in art have been encouraged to consider their future professional role in the context of both the contemporary world and the historical world. Besides a reverence for art history, they have been taught appropriate skills of mind, hand, and eye. They have been helped to find the next steps in their life journey, and have been challenged to be the best they can be in their chosen specialty.... [-]

Why Study Music?

The mission of the Music Department in support of the mission of Aquinas College is to provide both to the music major and general education students: first, a deeper understanding and experience of music from the abundant diversity of cultures present today and through the ages; and, second, the verbal and technical skills to communicate that knowledge of music.

How We're Different $70,000 in music department scholarships have been awarded for 2015-2016. Starting in October, applications are being accepted for next year. Students intern with area arts organizations and businesses including opera companies, touring Christian bands, schools of music, symphonies, international touring performers, travel agencies specializing in touring groups, and more. We host performances of exciting new works each semester by our student ensembles, faculty members, graduates and guest artists, in collaboration with rising star composers. We offer two professional degrees - Bachelor of Music Education and Bachelor of Music in Liturgical Music - as well as a Bachelor of Arts with an emphasis in Performance or Jazz, and a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration Dual Major in Business and Music. Faculty performances and presentations have taken place at scholarly conferences, festivals, and conventions, and in concert halls, cathedrals, outdoor venues, clubs, and universities across the U.S. and Europe, in Guinea West Africa, Japan, and South America. Graduates are leaders in music education, music ministry, performance, jazz studies, and music business. Liturgical music students prepare for their careers through partnering with young-alumni mentors, apprenticeships, and credited... [-]

Why Study Theatre?

Whether you're ready to take the stage or build it, you'll find your place in theatre at Aquinas. With a leading-edge facility and the addition of a new theatre department director, our program is setting a new standard of excellence.

In 2003, the $7-million Aquinas College Performing Arts Center (in collaboration with Aquinas College, Community Circle Theatre and Grand Rapids Catholic Secondary Schools) had its Grand Opening Season. It's a cooperative effect that brings extraordinary theatre to our community and our students.

How We're Different Aquinas is the only four-year private school in the Grand Rapids area that offers a theatre major. The program is part of a unique collaboration with Circle Theatre and the League of Catholic High Schools, the only one of its kind in the nation, allowing for a variety of performance, teaching, and technical training opportunities. The department produces four to five fully-mounted shows a year, with a focus on contemporary plays, musicals, and adaptations. The department offers three different 21-credit concentrations (performance, technical, and general) in addition to a 27-credit core. Aquinas offers up to four talent scholarships for incoming freshmen and transfers, based on audition (for performers) or portfolio (for designers, stage managers, and directors). Students have had internships at all of the major theatres in the Grand Rapids as well as at The Purple Rose in Chelsea and in Chicago, Houston, Los Angeles, and Phoenix. Students leave with more acting and design credits than majors from other colleges because... [-]