School of Arts, Culture and Society

Interim Dean:

Emerson B. Powery

Sally Keefer, administrative assistant

Assistant Dean:

Valerie Lemmon

Bridgette Watkins, administrative assistant

Assistant Dean of Arts Programming:

Tim Dixon (Deborah Hawkins, administrative assistant)

Identity and Mission Statement

The School of Arts, Culture, and Society serves students on many different intellectual, artistic, and career journeys, from Business to Music, from Philosophy to Social Work, from History to Education to Digital Media. Graduates pursue their vocations in nearly every area of life, serving and leading in church and society as the mission statement of Messiah University proclaims.

While representing a wide range of human ambition, interest, and calling, The School of Arts, Culture, and Society is characterized by three dominant emphases.

Education for human action: Through our disciplines we are a school that studies, interprets, and enhances human action in church and society.Whether through artistic performance, the development of business systems and educational leaders, or through analysis and interpretation of culture and society, faculty and students seek to understand human beings in the world and seek to enhance the ways human beings act upon and change the world.
Education with and for others: The School of Arts, Culture, and Society intentionally faces outward in public engagement, educating for and in the company of church and society. We enhance the cultural life of the region through the arts, assist community partners in understanding and addressing crucial social and cultural issues, and prepare students for the difficult work of citizenship in the 21^st century. In these ways and many others, the school works from a fundamental conviction that learning is for others and pursued with others.
Education toward reconciliation: We produce graduates focused on pursuing reconciliation with others and with God’s desires for the world. We seek to understand and develop forms of human action that are consistent with the action of God in and for the world, that action being realized most concretely and wholly through the person of Jesus. We seek to know and contribute to what is beautiful and just in a world where human beings act as persons made in the image of God. We also look compassionately at the places where the world's people need reconciliation with one another, and we desire to make the earth more of what God created it and us to be.

The School of Arts, Culture, and Society pursues these ends in the academic offerings in the following departments and programs:

Department of Art and Design
Department of Biblical, Religious, and Philosophical Studies
Department of Business
Department of Communication
Department of Education
Department of History, Politics ,and International Relations
Department of Human Development and Family Science
Department of Language, Literature, and Writing
Department of Music
Department of Psychology, Criminal Justice, and Sociology
Department of Social Work
Department of Theatre and Dance
Program in Digital Public Humanities
Program in Digital Media
Program in Ethnic and Area Studies
Program in Peace and Conflict Studies
Teacher Education Program

Additionally, The School of Arts, Culture, and Society provides public oriented programming through the following entities:

Center for Public Humanities
Thriving Together: Congregations for Racial Justice
The Messiah University Performing Arts Series
The Messiah University Theatre Season
The Galleries at Messiah University
Community Connections Convening
Summer Camps in Arts and Academics