Dear Friends:

It is my great pleasure to welcome the College of Fine Arts community and our friends and supporters to the new academic year! The next months of the 2026-2027 academic year will be a momentous and exciting time for all of us.

The work of our college is, of course, to educate our students at the highest level possible, teaching skills and ways of knowing the world that will provide enormous benefit and successful and nurturing career pathways as students compose and shape their future lives.

A major goal of the college is also to richly enhance the lives of our communities near and far — within UNLV and outside of the university. We believe that the arts and humanities provide an essential component of a deeply satisfying life, and indeed, as a public good, the arts belong to all of us! This perspective has perhaps never been more important than it is today, as is the way the arts provide unity and common ground through shared experiences.
 
As the insightful cultural leader Darren Walker, former President of the Ford Foundation and current Chief Executive of Anonymous Content, wrote in a recent opinion piece in The New York Times entitled "Hollywood Needs to Listen to Gen Z," there is an emerging trend taking place “especially among the young, in the form of a profound yearning for shared experiences and connection that remind us all that we belong to something larger than ourselves.” This opportunity for shared experience is deeply important for younger audiences — and I would posit — ALL audiences — that seek making shared meaning of how we live. Mr. Walker’s words encapsulate this idea: “less empty escape, more mutual recognition, less mindless content, more mutual connection. After all, we have always gathered around stories, sports, music and art to laugh, to wonder, to feel something, and feel part of something.”

How do we, in the UNLV College of Fine Arts, celebrate shared experiences with our students and community?
 
We gather our constituencies together through projects such as our faculty and staff appreciation days, through robust global engagement, by providing students exceptional real-world skills and business acumen through internships, mentoring and experiential learning, bolstered by the frameworks of a couple of new interdisciplinary degrees in the college that will complement the superb disciplinary areas of expertise being taught. The sum of these approaches will lead the college in directions that capture contemporary arts thinking, innovative and entrepreneurial mindsets, engaging with community through meaningful partnerships and looking at the arts as a catalyst for social change and artists as change-makers. All of these aspirations are pulled together under dynamic and collective strategic planning in the college and the implementation of our mission statement: The College of Fine Arts educates, empowers, and engages creative people to become visionary change-makers in the arts through acts of imagination.

Mr. Walker summarizes his message succinctly and in a way that is deeply resonant with our college: “Through our art, we are rediscovering community.”

At this complex time in our world, these words truly matter. As we tell our stories, open the arts to all, move forward to encourage our students to invent their futures and become leaders in their disciplines, we affirm and celebrate the profound importance of the arts in our lives. This is the underpinning of all that we do. We are poised to find new and successful ways to connect with community and create new knowledge, thus engaging with society in increasingly inventive ways for the long years to come. We are thrilled and optimistic about what the future holds!

With these thoughts in mind, we will create remarkable opportunities for our students, faculty, staff and community for the 2026-27 academic year!

All warmest wishes,
Nancy J. Uscher