APU Meets $3 Million Challenge Grant Boosting Art Education and Artists

The Windgate Charitable Foundation awarded Azusa Pacific University a 1:2 challenge grant of $3 million to establish scholarships for art majors and support a graduate program that equips student leaders in the field of art education. Azusa Pacific recently reached the goal by raising $1.5 million, which increased the total art endowment to $4.5 million and constituted the university’s second-largest endowment to date.

The scholarships benefit undergraduate and graduate art and design students based on academic merit, financial need, and/or artistic talent. Additionally, the grant enables the launch of a Master of Arts in Art Education program in spring 2017. This 30-unit low-residency degree for artists who love to teach is designed for working professionals and busy educators. The M.A. program format benefits students through convenient online courses and two one-week summer intensive practicums at APU’s main campus in Azusa. The program will begin accepting applications in November 2016.

“With this endowment we can provide significant scholarships to deserving art students and to teachers across the country as they refine their artistry and become better teachers, and in turn inspire their students,” said Stephen P. Johnson, DMA, dean of College of Music and the Arts.

Scholarship recipients recognize the direct correlation between the Windgate grant and the advancement of artists in the workplace.

Kat English, a 2016 B.A. in Fine Arts graduate, who works on commission in the Los Angeles area, credits the Windgate scholarship with beginning “a great chapter of my life.”

“I am more aware 
of my creative process and understand art making on a whole new level," said David Navarro, a 2013 Master of Fine Arts graduate and eight-year teacher. "It has eased my ability to teach what I practice and make it more profound and meaningful.”

The Windgate Charitable Foundation, based in Siloam Springs, Arkansas, supports programs focused on visual arts and crafts, the promotion of healthy relationships, and Christian higher education.

The mission of the Azusa Pacific University Department of Art and Design, part of the School of Visual and Performing Arts and housed in the College of Music and the Arts, is to prepare art students for a lifetime of artistic expression and to cultivate individual creativity through the study of history, technique, presentation, and social engagement, as a reflector of the creative and transformative nature of God. The Department of Art and Design offers three undergraduate majors, three minors, a Master of Fine Arts (MFA) in Visual Art, and an online M.A. in Art History.