Texas A&M’s New Arts College Is Preparing To Shape the Future of the Arts World. It’s One Show You Won’t Want To Miss.

It’s always a flurry of activity in Texas A&M University’s College of Performance, Visualization and Fine Arts (PVFA). But one week last November, the flurry was a full-on creative storm.

That week, the talent and artistic offerings of PVFA students and faculty were on full display through nearly 20 events that spanned every area of the college.

One day, students in the dance science program performed new choreographic works for two sold-out shows, rotating, leaping and swaying in dances ranging from graceful ballet to high-energy jazz.

The next, the performance and visual studies program, in conjunction with a film studies course, screened a documentary about student activism at Columbia University. Following the film, students participated in a lively discussion on the aesthetics of activism and the documentary’s rhetorical strategies.

Over in Rudder Theatre, characters in colorful costumes commanded the stage for the theatre program’s second original production, “The Post-America Variety Show.” The characters sang, danced, told jokes and had the two performances’ sizeable crowds laughing, calling out responses and even doing a little jazzercise.
 

All week, the air was thick with music as students from the music performance program showcased their talents in the program’s inaugural showcase, Crescendo. Peacefully plinking pianos, jubilantly blasting horns, vibrantly clanging steel pans, cheerfully whistling woodwinds — all serenaded listeners through 14 student performances at the Liberal Arts and Humanities Building and the Rudder Theatre Complex over five days.

And that’s not even mentioning the visualization talks and workshops sprinkled throughout the week, where students could hear from design experts and grow their skills in turning ideas into vibrant reality.

Though some of the week’s events were more classic representations of the arts, others — including an experimental and electronic music performance and a showcase that combined music with interactive visuals — weren’t your average arts presentations.

But then, the College of Performance, Visualization and Fine Arts isn’t your average arts college. Like everything in Aggieland, it’s embracing innovation to ensure that its students are prepared to meet the needs of an ever-evolving industry head-on. With an interdisciplinary focus and technology at its core, the college takes a new approach to the arts, one designed to make Texas A&M an institution that doesn’t just contribute to the arts but also leads the industry into the future.

Assembling the Players

Established in fall 2022, PVFA was created to unite the university’s artistic disciplines under one roof and infuse them with a technological focus to prepare students for the arts of the 21st century.
 

At the time, the creation brought together the visualization, dance science and performance studies degrees, previously housed under the College of Architecture, the College of Education and Human Development, and the then-College of Liberal Arts, respectively. It quickly grew, and now in its fourth year, it boasts 105 faculty members, more than 660 students and five main programs: dance science, performance and visual studies, theatre, visualization and music performance. In total, the programs offer five undergraduate degrees and five graduate degrees, including a new MFA in dance and the college’s first Ph.D. in Visual Computing and Interactive Media.

Though the college is still in its infancy, it’s far from the beginning of Aggieland’s ties with the arts. Texas A&M’s earliest yearbooks reveal that students participated in music and theatre pastimes through clubs like the Glee Club and the Dramatic Club, a legacy that continues today through numerous arts-focused student organizations. The university has helped launch the start of musicians such as Lyle Lovett ’79, Robert Earl Keen ’78 and Chris Tomlin ’95. And the visualization program has gained a reputation for turning out top-notch graduates since Texas A&M first offered the subject in 1989.

Still, when it came to a dedicated academic space for the arts, Texas A&M was lacking. While the university was earning accolades and national rankings for the education it provides students in topics like engineering and business, it was playing second fiddle to other public universities in performing arts degrees.
 

For instance, in contrast to a typical theatre degree where students hone their skills by putting on published productions from playwrights, Texas A&M’s theatre degree focuses on devised theatre, a process that allows students to create new productions from the ground up. This approach provides Aggies with experience creating original works, an increasing focus for the theatre world.

The visualization degree, unlike other universities’ visual arts programs, intertwines art, computing and science. It’s a model that’s long earned Texas A&M its spot as the top animation school in Texas and high marks in visual effects and game design, but under PVFA, the program has continued to expand to prepare students for the ever-evolving and widening range of visual careers.

Through the performance and visual studies program, students analyze the role, meaning, and social and cultural contexts of the arts. Unlike programs at other universities, which often foster this discovery specifically for visual-focused art forms like paintings or film, PVFA’s program takes a broader look by also analyzing performances and even the ways people “perform” their sense of self in their daily interactions. Students graduate with a rich cultural understanding and the ability to think critically, making them attractive job candidates in arts careers and beyond.
 

Arts in Action

There’s always something going on at PVFA. Here are just a few examples of the student and faculty creativity that’s on display all year.
 

Performing Better Together

Last fall, the performance and visual studies program hosted a performance by Kole Odutola, a lecturer and storyteller who’s spoken around the world. Dressed in colorful Nigerian Yoruba attire, Odutola brought an electric charisma to the stage as he demonstrated the Nigerian oral storytelling tradition, weaving an engaging story of a troublemaker tortoise who tricks an elephant king. At the story’s close, he invited the crowd to discuss with their fellow attendees what might have happened next for the characters, telling the audience that when stories combine, something new emerges.

That sentiment about the exciting possibilities of collaboration is one woven into PVFA’s very fabric. Its programs collaborate on countless projects, classes and events to explore what combined art forms can create and to give students experience working with people from a wide variety of disciplines. Even the college’s structure is interdisciplinary: PVFA has no separate departments. Rather, each program area lives under the college’s overall umbrella, avoiding the across-discipline friction that can come with a departmental setup.
 

“You have musicians working with critical theorists, and computer programmers working with art historians who are working with theatre directors,” said Dr. Daniel Humphrey, the performance and visual studies academic undergraduate director. “In the 20th century, a lot of scholars believed you had to stay in your rigid discipline. But that started breaking down when people realized disciplinarity was just creating artificial barriers.”

These collaborations take countless forms throughout the college — such as dance faculty performing works in front of virtual scenes designed by visualization experts or music students composing songs and creating soundtracks for theatre productions — but also expand to other areas of the university like engineering, English and psychology. Health has been a particularly promising area of collaboration, and the college plans to soon launch an arts in health minor to expand upon its multiple partnerships with the Health Science Center and its existing work bringing art to local hospitals.

“People are seeing how the arts are foundational to many careers,” said Christine Bergeron, the dance science academic undergraduate program director. “The artist is an interdisciplinary creature, so teaching students these collaborative skills is essential for who they are.”

Expanding Their Repertoire

This intersection of the arts was also on display in the theatre program’s November 2025 production “The Post-America Variety Show,” which told the story of citizens of a post-apocalyptic New College Station putting on a secret variety show.

As the audience shuffled into the theater, a student at a piano onstage took requests, underscoring the pre-show with whatever songs the audience called out. Onstage, the set designed by a theatre student included brick walls, towering arches and platforms strung with colorful empty milk jugs. Above it all stretched digital projections depicting patches of starry night sky to enhance the immersion of the play.
 

One team had used motion capture to track movements and facial expressions for forensic nursing training simulations. Another created virtual reality video games to help improve patients’ eye muscles and hand-eye coordination. And one faculty member was exploring how training robots through virtual simulations can lead to advances in manufacturing.

“Our goal is not just to teach technical skills but to help students think critically, adapt and take the lead in an industry that is constantly evolving,” said Hadeel Ramadan, the visualization academic undergraduate program director. “With artificial intelligence and emerging technologies reshaping creative fields at an unprecedented pace, we want our visualization students to be the ones driving innovation, pushing boundaries, and shaping the future of visual art and interactive media.”

Preparing students for the workforce is another key reason for the college’s interdisciplinary focus. “The state has a large workforce in the arts, and as a land-grant institution, Texas A&M has a responsibility to prepare the future workforce,” McLaughlin explained. “And the greatest need is for people who can speak multiple disciplinary languages. We’re producing those kinds of students.”
 

Though the music performance and theatre programs are just beginning to award degrees, the other three programs have seen their students gain jobs at gaming companies; film studios like Pixar, Disney and DreamWorks; corporations like Apple and Google; universities; museums; occupational therapy practices; and even their own arts-related businesses.

One of those successful graduates is Gracie Arenas Strittmatter ’04 ’08. Even before earning her master’s in visualization, Strittmatter had already landed a job at Electronic Arts (EA), where she’s worked for the last 17 years. She’s contributed to games like Madden NFL and Star Wars: The Old Republic and now oversees a team of software engineers and technical artists as a supervising director of technical operations for EA Sports.

“Texas A&M builds superheroes, and I think that’s driven by the Aggie core values,” Strittmatter said. “They’re what gave me the confidence to step into leadership roles years before I realized I was ready.”
 

The institute maintains close industry relationships, including a partnership with Sony Electronics, which furnished the stages’ top-of-the-line equipment and collaborates with the college on workshops and other events.

Beyond this partnership, Sony has also invested in the college’s commitment to shaping future professionals by funding the Sony First-Generation Student Success Fund, which supports programs for the first-gen students who comprise more than 19% of the college’s population.

“Through this fund, Sony looks to mentor, develop and nurture future talent by providing them with opportunities,” said Theresa Alesso, president of Imaging Products and Solutions Americas at Sony Electronics. “We are invigorated by the way this partnership has grown organically and brings value to all involved. Staff and students are given unprecedented access to state-of-the-art technology, while Sony receives valuable feedback from the voices who are poised to shape the future of the industry.”

A Crescendo of Impact

At an InterArts Showcase from the music performance program last fall, music students played piano, vibraphone and marimba in collaboration with a visualization class that created audio-reactive visuals to pair with the music and interact with it in real time.

The last musician to perform was Grace Burton ’26. Her mallets flew over the marimba bars as she performed with astounding speed and precision. Her performance ranged from high and lively music to deep, rich and celestial notes, while the screens behind her displayed dots and orbs that zipped past or rotated gently based on the music. The combined effect of visuals and music conveyed both an exciting liveliness and a majestic beauty.
 

But for Burton, it was a performance that almost never happened. Though the senior has a lifelong passion for music, she arrived in Aggieland without the option of a music program.

“When I toured Texas A&M, I saw the Aggie family and fell in love with the place,” she shared. “I started in performance studies and joined a few music organizations, but by the end of my first semester, I found myself wanting more with music than just the one-off performances I was doing.”

She began to consider bidding Aggieland farewell to pursue her music degree dreams, but then she received the news: PVFA was officially opening its music performance degree in fall 2024. Fast-forward to today, and Burton will be one of the program’s first two graduates this spring, leaving the university with new music skills, experience composing and performing original pieces, and a new passion to be an interdisciplinary percussionist like her faculty mentors.

“This has been a crazy, experimental experience for me,” she said. “And I’ve loved every second of it.”

Burton isn’t the only student who’s found her place in PVFA. The college allows students like her to achieve their dream of becoming both an Aggie and an arts professional, but by infusing the arts into Aggieland, it also has the potential to impact every student.

“We want students to leave Texas A&M as well-rounded individuals who represent the best of themselves and the best of this university,” said Andrea Edwards, the music performance academic program director. “But without the enrichment of the arts, we turn out people who are 75% complete. We want to create a positive impact in today’s world, and that requires 100%.”

The sentiment is shared by architects and Texas A&M Distinguished Alumni Shelley ’78 and Jeff Potter ’78. Recently, the couple’s combined passion for music and student success guided their decision to provide funding for the music performance program to purchase 10 top-of-the-line Fender guitars for students to hone their skills.

“The creative arts are a benefit to non-creative enterprises, and creativity makes for better solutions in any field,” Jeff said.

“I serve on the college’s Dean’s Development Council, and it’s been so exciting to learn about the innovation happening at the college,” Shelley added. “The potential is unlimited.”

McLaughlin agrees. “I want Texas A&M to be the place everybody looks to,” he said. “PVFA is built to make Texas A&M the leader in defining and educating for future forms of the arts. There’s an immersive experience economy on the horizon for the 2030s with the advance of technology like AI and 6G, and someone will be designing and defining what the performing and visual aspects of our augmented world will look like. Our college is designed for and positioned to be the center of that work. A few decades from now, I want people to say, ‘If you want to understand how the arts are transformed and are transforming people’s experiences, you’ve got to go see what’s going on at Texas A&M.’”