Stony Brook University is home to over 150 majors and within the next three years, that number will increase by at least one.
Since the spring semester of 2011, the Center for Dance, Movement and Somatic Learning has been working on a curriculum for a dance and media arts major on campus.
Stony Brook University currently only offers a minor in dance. Though the university is known as a science research institution, Amy Sullivan, director of the Center for Dance, Movement and Somatic Learning feels that there is a place for a dance and media arts major at Stony Brook.
“We need a broad stroke of education,” said Sullivan. “We need a balance off physical and creative work.”
On campus there is a wide array of students with different academic backgrounds minoring in dance and some students believe that adding the major on campus will allow for students, who are interested in dance, to receive a better education.
“Each professor offers something different, and each of us in the minor wish we could have more time working with them to absorb all that they have to offer, as a major would allow,” said senior Kathleen Reindhardt.
The Dance and media arts major would require strong, technical and creative work. Throughout the students’ undergraduate time at stony brook, they will learn how to use cameras and edit video, while also learning different styles of dance.
For the dance portion of the major, students will work on the principals of dance and will be required to do work outside of the dance studio. “It’s not just dancing in the studio, the principals of dance go beyond that,” said Sullivan
Across the State Unviersity Of New York system there are many schools that already offer dance as a major but neither of them are in collaboration with media arts, leaving stony brook unvierity’s new program to be the first of its kind, with in the SUNY system.
With there not being any other Dance and Media Arts majors, The implementation of it at Stony Brook has the potential to drastically increase propestive students and admission.
“I think it would have a positive impact,” said Stony Brook student Jenna Burke. [For] so many students, when choosing colleges, its hard to find a good arts program. I think this would only add to this campus, not take away from it.”
The planning is in its early stages and the goal of the staff is to have the major launched in three years. But for now, the stony brook community can only invasion what the learning environment would be like.
“The body is the new classroom,” said Sullivan.