When graduate student Branden Stair played Alec Wilder’s “Effie the Elephant” at his tuba recital last fall, he was accompanied by illustrations projected on a screen behind him.

The pictures were created by his sister, a graduate of the Visual Arts and Art History Department at FAU.

Department Chair Heather Coltman was impressed. “I didn’t even know about it until the rehearsal,” she says, but she sees it as an example of a fresh attitude brought about by the new School of the Arts. The umbrella, formed last July by the Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters, combines the Departments of Theatre, Music, Visual Arts and Art History, and the University Galleries.

“In the year prior to the decision, students would hear things and ask, ‘Will we lose focus?’ ‘What will change?'” says Coltman. But since the announcement of the plan, she says, “a number of students on their own initiative came up with little projects” that combined disciplines. And in last fall’s Latin American Festival, she noticed a student-driven mix of dancers and poets from the Department of Theatre.

George Sparks’ eyes twinkle when he hears such stories. “It sends light beams out,” says the inaugural director of SOTA, and the rays radiate across the college, the campus and the community. Sparks juggles many roles at FAU: he is a professor of music, pit director for summer repertory, director of bands, founder and principal conductor of the Florida Wind Symphony, clarinetist, member of the University Faculty Senate, and conductor of FAU’s orchestra.

So, how’s it going so far?

“The School of the Arts is a work in progress,” says Sparks. “As an artist, you never reach what you want. There will always be ongoing goals in various stages of completion.” He offers examples: The Board of Advisors that will form links to the community has chosen 10 of its 12 members. A search is on for a donor to give SOTA a name as well as a building. A new Ph.D. in Comparative Arts is expected to be offered in 2005-06.

“I don’t think there will be anything like it in the country,” says Sparks. “We will combine courses and tie into creative writing, storytelling and film studies.” These subjects and others will come in from departments outside SOTA.

Meanwhile, shows have gone on. The Biennial Art Faculty Exhibition in October was the kick-off of both FAU’s arts season and SOTA. Latin American artists have come in for exhibitions, enabling collaboration between the galleries and the Department of Music.

Rod Faulds, director of University Galleries, says SOTA has forged a new spirit of cooperation between department chairs. “Most of us who are involved in public programming are . . . trying to realize the potential of working together. There wasn’t a culture of collaboration among the arts before.”

According to Department of Theatre Chair Jean-Louis Baldet, the departments have always engaged when it made sense. “Now we’re looking for collaborations,” he clarifies.

“Before, they were happening organically.”

Coltman cites examples from the 2003-04 Event Calendar: “The Investigation” included music of the Holocaust that gave students, she says, a new perspective. “Much Ado About Nothing” featured guitar and voice students. And for “Ubu Roi,” music professor James Cunningham built instruments out of trash for theater students to play.

Sparks also notices the change. “The effect on relationships between departments has been so positive. I’m a real believer that the more faculty know about each other, the more they will respect each other. They have a better understanding of what [all] the departments are and what their challenges are.”

Explaining another aspect of the work in progress, Baldet says, “[We] don’t quite know how we interlock with each other, and we’re learning how we can use and share one another’s skills and not lose touch with our own art form.”

Interdisciplinary knowledge is a major goal in placing the departments under one marquee. Sparks substitutes his own word, “interdisciplinarity,” in a phrase he attributes to Choral Director Patricia Fleitas – “interdisciplinarity with integrity,” to be more specific.

“Interdisciplinary is wonderful,” says Baldet, “but each art approaches art in a different way: individuals vs. ensemble artists, for example. Each has a different point of view. Musicians tend to objectify, visual artists ‘subjectify,’ and theater dances back and forth between the two.”

Still, Baldet is happy with the efforts to date. “The faculty is encouraged,” he reports, “[and] the public likes the idea of coming to a School of the Arts. They comment that the work is so much better, but there’s no difference,” he says wryly.

Sparks acknowledges, “Perception is a big part of reality.” While attendance and ticket sales for performances are up, he says, the trend began before SOTA existed.

Faulds says he’s seeing an encouraging mixture of university and community at the galleries. Sparks reports more students in attendance, but more no-shows, too. He has requested, but not required, that instructors of music and theater appreciation courses have students attend performances outside their subject. At least some professors are doing so, which may account for higher student attendance, he says.

Baldet points out, “Around the nation, when they’ve done this [change], it has meant a well-defined financial plan for the perpetuation of the art form.” He credits Sparks and Dean William Covino with “doing wonderful stuff in seeking out donors and grant sources, which is what the arts have long needed. It will take us a long time to build a private funding base that will anchor all of the programs.”

Laurie Carney, development officer for the Schmidt College, continues to address donor issues, while part-timer Beth DeFarber works the grant side of the funding coin. A major goal for SOTA, says Sparks, is a system where faculty can find funding and have help to go after it. To that end, a series of three grant workshops will be offered to all Schmidt College faculty. Grant opportunities and information to pursue them will be posted at MyFAU.com.

SOTA has obtained its first grant, from the Mary and Robert Pew Public Education Fund. Sparks tested the new system, completing the information online with DeFarber’s assistance, and found it a simple and gratifying experience.

Building on the Department of Music’s three summers of Piano Camp for under-served students of the Village Academy, the new grant will send FAU music majors to South Grade Elementary School to provide music lessons, and South Grade students will attend a one-week summer music camp at FAU.

Sparks has found the funding climate to be changing. As public funding for arts education shrinks, he says, FAU needs to show the state government it wants to find other sources. More and more, he adds, grantors want grantees to contribute resources to their programs. FAU will seek partnerships with K-12 education and nonprofit arts organizations, as with the South Grade project, for which the Beacon School Program is contributing transportation.

In January, SOTA hosted a performance by the Kennedy Center to 1,000 under-served school children, thanks to a contribution by a member of SOTA’s Board of Advisors. This partnership included a clinic for public school teachers on integrating the arts into curriculum and a masters class for FAU arts students.

Baldet fears that the administration doesn’t fully understand the financial costs aquired to do this right, but he is optimistic. “We have limited impact as individual departments. The three arts are not a completion because we don’t have dance – it may be the fourth leg of the table. I think the school will add that.”

The Department of Theatre chair has been at FAU for 25 years. “I’ve found FAU doesn’t quite know what to do with the arts,” Baldet says. “Our hope is that the School of the Arts will help define the arts and give it a purpose the administration can understand.”

The original concept, Sparks explains, was to merge the departments into one fine arts department. For more than a year, a committee of two faculty from each discipline, and Faulds, researched the possibility. Although it makes good sense for the organization of the college, says Sparks, “it just didn’t look reasonable to anyone.

“We lobbied the dean to do a school of the arts instead and to keep the chairs. He listened, changed his mind and has been really supportive. He’s always open to listening to our suggestions, complaints and worries. I know the dean is absolutely committed to the arts. He’s truly a visionary dean with a commitment to an interdisciplinary approach that has resonated upward [in the administration].”

Covino acknowledges he has asked a lot from Sparks in pursuing his larger vision of the College of Arts and Letters as “a regional center of excellence,” he says, “marked by terrific interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary energies. The College is dedicated to preparing thoughtful 21st-century citizens through . . . the distinctive and complementary approaches of artists, humanists and social scientist . . . [to] the complexity and diversity of a global society . . . that contributes to the cultural, ethical, and professional maturity of our students and enriches the communities and regions in which they live and work.”

At a March leadership conference, Sparks learned about the Music Paradigm created by Roger Nierenberg of Connecticut. Business executives take seats within a symphony orchestra to view their organizational relationships in new ways. The website, www.musicalparadigm.com, describes the process. “The conductor may be viewed as a CEO or team leader and the instrumental families . . . may be businesses or teams. Together, they find the best solutions for working together.”

Such a premise fascinates Sparks, he says. “If you look at schools of music, very often conductors are in chairs’ positions – and the same for theater, directors are in leadership positions. The business community is looking at the arts as a paradigm for management.”

Covino calls the leadership of this conductor “inspirational . . . [Sparks’] tireless energy and enthusiasm have been infectious,” he says, “and he has become recognized both within the University and throughout the region as a distinguished artist and a great advocate for the arts at FAU.” As the School of the Arts radiates light, so, apparently does Sparks.