Mural in Thomas Hall 5.17. MARIA CASTANO / THE QUADRANGLE
Maria Castano, Staff Writer
Following unprecedented budget cuts in recent years, Manhattan University has slowly been building itself back up, and looks to attract new students by marketing its resources, with an emphasis on scholarships, grants and cutting-edge technology.
Director of Performing Arts Andrew Bauer shared information regarding the performing arts scholarship with The Quadrangle, and spoke about how students are oftentimes uninformed about the scholarship’s existence.
“We have 12 [scholarship seats] for each class …They’re given out by audition,” Bauer said. “So if a student shows promise and talent, they’re awarded a scholarship, which they can keep all the way through their four years at the institution. We don’t fill up those 12 every year. Sometimes the students don’t know about the scholarships until after they arrive on campus in the fall. So in those cases, we do give out some additional scholarships if we have some left over… I think we have to do a better job as an institution about raising the profile of these scholarships to prospective students and their families so that they know about it, because every year I get quite a few students who tell me they would have auditioned for it if they had known about it.”
Bauer acknowledges that the performing arts department’s marketing to current and prospective students is lacking, however, this has not hindered enrollment in the Performing Arts ensembles.
“Enrollment at the university is down at this time, but the enrollment in the performing arts ensembles is actually up,” Bauer said. “Every single one of our performing arts ensembles has significantly more members than it did last year at the same time. So, I think we should market the performing arts organization here at the school more because it attracts a particular type of student …The students that get involved with performing arts at the university level are the type of students that just are generally more engaged in the community.”
Manhattan University offers limited talent-based scholarships and grants which include the Performing Arts Scholarship, The Quadrangle Scholarship and Liberal Arts award. These limited opportunities and spots within them still doesn’t deter student interest.
“Our students [in the Performing Arts department] tend to not leave the school. They tend to stay here,” Bauer said. “Once they come in as freshmen, they stay the full four years, and they don’t transfer out [or] drop out. We have a very good, very strong record of maintaining our students here.”
Considering student interest and talent, MU has made efforts for students to put their expression to use. Crystal Benitez, coordinator of digital media technology, shared with The Quadrangle the efforts that have been made to showcase and facilitate students’ creative work both in and out of classes.
“We moved [to Miguel] over the summer, so we’re currently in 214,” Benitez said. “That’s one of our Digital Media Labs; we have two. They [students] have access to the labs as long as the buildings are open, which is almost 24 hours, [including weekends]. And then the sound and piano labs were also moved to Miguel, so that we have that section of the building now as a whole kind of creative corner. … We brought in the 3D printer so that the 3D modeling courses can now go into prototyping and making small sculptures. Right now, they’re working on wearables. For our animation courses, we use industry standard software, the same stuff that Disney Pixar uses.”
Benitez also shared with The Quadrangle the importance of representation at career fairs for people within the creative arts.
“I think their career fairs don’t always offer things for students that are creative, but otherwise they do a good job with the clubs and creating an artistic environment,” Benitez said. “When I was an adjunct, students would tell me every year how the Job Fair just did not hit home for them, how it’s mostly architecture or business or engineering.”
Benitez further shared the plans the department has in motion to remediate this issue.
“This year, we actually did have a few art organizations involved [in the fair],” Benitez said. “I personally made sure that the BCA was part of the job fair. BCA is the Bronx Council of Arts, … they cater to Bronx artists, Bronx designers, photographers, cinematographers, writers, poets, journalists, anything in that realm. They actually had a few job openings at the current moment, so it was really good timing to get them involved at the job fair, but moving forward, I did have a conversation with the people that are in charge of the job fair, as well as the President, as well as the Dean … a few other faculty members, it became a very wide discussion, and it is understood that we do need more more art agencies, organizations, governmental [and] nonprofit organizations. It’s hard to get these entities at job fairs, unfortunately, because of a lot of unwritten policies, unspoken rules that go along with these types of industries.”
Benitez highlighted the importance of student initiative when it comes to researching careers in the arts and encourages those interested in these industries to use faculty as resources.
“It’s one of my main priorities to make sure that everyone understands what’s out there,” Benitez said. “Before I was at Manhattan, I used to work at Arts Westchester, which is an Arts Council, and so they’re literally your information hub of where you get art grant funding, internships, and all types of resources for open calls and opportunities that artists would love to have the opportunity to access. We’ve been pushing grant kind of information, workshops, types of information we use the Moodle community sites a lot more so this semester than ever. But we’ve definitely been trying to make sure that the students understand that there are resources out there and that we are here to support [them]. One of the things I always kind of push forward is, if you have an idea, let me know, and if we can be part of getting that [idea] accomplished, then the more the merrier.”
Benitez also hopes to find ways to further display student work.
“Soon, there will be a TV in Miguel that will also do this,” Benitez said. “So that we’re not only showcasing the digital works that are printed, but now we’re also showcasing animations [and] maybe some sound projects, or just digital media, like motion graphics and [the work from our] video course that makes some stellar videos. We’re also actually planning for next semester to have art being shown in the library. And this is something that we also used to do in the past. … So next semester will be our first time having student artwork shown there, and we plan for the first one to be a solo of a senior that will be graduating.”
Madison Hackett ‘25, a digital media arts graduate who painted the newly-unveiled mural in Miguel 5.17, also shared with The Quadrangle her outlook on how Manhattan University handles financial opportunities for students.
“The school is not always super clear on the funding issues,” Hackett said. “So as long as the school is more clear about what they intend to give us, I think that would be more helpful, but I would say there’s a lot of opportunities for students like me in the creative arts to show their talent and have fun with it.”