Fine arts program at Culver Academies is growing to meet student interests

The arts are flourishing at Culver Academies as the fine arts department grows to meet the interests of students seeking to pursue creative endeavors as a hobby or a career.

“We want to challenge students and foster their creativity,” said Jenna Schroer, department chair and director of vocal music.

Culver is expanding its programs, growing its orchestra with the hire of a full-time director, adding a digital studio in the music program and investing in its theatre program so its students have access to state-of-the art equipment and adding in-demand classes, such as a class on how to create short-term, short form audiovisual content.

“We want to meet students where they are,” Schroer said. "My colleagues and I intentionally design tiered pathways for students to have access to arts education at a level that best serves them." 

The fine arts department covers four disciplines: music, which includes instrumental and vocal performance; theatre, which includes theatre arts, film and video; dance, which includes performance, choreography and production design; and visual arts, which includes ceramics, drawing, painting, sculpture and design; and photography, which includes digital and black and white photography.

Schroer said the Culver staff is constantly reviewing its curriculum.

“We're looking at current curriculum and saying: What are the gaps? What do students need in order to be able to build experiences that are going to be meaningful and fun?” she said.

As an example of that, she points to a new class this year in the theatre department called “Reels to Realization,” which draws on students’ interest in social media, particularly TikTok, where creators make short-form videos. Students in the class learn to create short-form audiovisual content with the purpose of selling products and ideas.

“Students already know how to take live videos or they're engaging with TikTok in some way. We’re starting at their level and showing them what they could do with more knowledge and access to technology," Schroer said. 

 

 

The music department has added a digital production and piano lab on the second floor. There is a classroom with 14 stations equipped with mini keyboards and Macintosh computers with Pro Tools, the state-of-the art software that's used in the industry for digital production.

“We wanted to have a recording studio space for our students who are interested in engineering and recoding. There are so many intersections of science and music,” Schroer said.

Another area of growth Schroer points to is orchestra with the hiring last year of Judith Goltz as orchestra director.

“I think having a string specialist that's here full time is certainly a step in the right direction in being able to build our symphonic program,” she said.

Goltz has made connections with the LaPorte, Indiana, Symphony Orchestra and a community orchestra in Valparaiso, Indiana, called Rusty Strings.

“Our students have been off campus performing in larger ensembles with area musicians, which is a wonderful experience, Schroer said.

Culver Military Academy has a long history of having a strong marching band. Early this fall, the CMA Band performed at the Blueberry Festival in Plymouth and won three trophies: Best Marching Band, Best Band in Show and Camren Allman ’25 was named Best Drum Major.

“We have 22 new cadets this year and I’ve been really impressed with the sound that the band is making,” Schroer said.

The theatre department also has been growing under Adam Joyce, who is in his fourth year as director of theatre. Joyce is a screenwriter, actor and filmmaker who previously was a Northwestern University faculty member and administrative director of the university’s National High School Institute.

A popular class Joyce teaches is “Film Studies,” which, until shortly before Joyce arrived, was a theoretical class. Students would watch films and then discuss them. The year before Joyce arrived, longtime master instructor Stacey Warren had students start making films in the class using their iPhones and beginning-level editing tools.

 

 

The change in curriculum was a huge success and laid the foundation for Joyce to build upon. When Joyce started, Culver bought three small DSLR cameras, with three interchangeable lenses. Since then, the school has added another nine cameras and has a total of more than 40 lenses and also has added professional-level dollies and jib arms, shoulder-held rigs, handheld rigs, skates and sliders.

“We just have an array of tools that you would expect at a graduate level filmmaking class,” Joyce said.

Under Joyce, Culver’s student film festival has drawn a lot of interest. Students began working on their films in the fall, rather than the spring in previous years, so they would have more time.

The Mountainfilm on Tour documentary film festival, sponsored by R. Casey Olson ’71, a retired oil executive, was held on campus for the fifth year this fall.

“Having the Mountainfilm festival here brings voices and perspectives from all over the globe onto this campus. Not just through the film itself but it's also through the filmmakers,” Schroer said.

Students also have opportunities to be involved in plays and musicals. This fall, Culver students put on the musical “Six: (Teen Edition),” about the six wives of Henry VIII, which was directed by Stacy Joyce.

Schroer said the play showed how theatre can intersect with other academic disciplines. In making the set for “Six,” students researched the colors, the architecture and the clothing of the Tudor Period while preparing to put on the play.

 

 

In the spring, students will put on the play “Night of the Living Dead.”

Stacy Joyce, visiting guest artist, also was instrumental in the theatre department reestablishing its membership with the International Thespian Society by inducting 15 new members this fall. Three more candidates will be inducted in January. Culver will be taking 18 students to the annual conference in Indianapolis where they will compete in various “Thespy” competitions, learn about collegiate pathways in theatre, and participate in statewide “Theatre Tech Challenges.”

The visual arts department offers 20 classes, ranging from drawing to sculpture to photography. One of the most popular classes is ceramics.

“Everybody loves that class,” Schroer said.

Senior instructor Diana Westphal doesn’t just teach the class, she also opens the studio for all students to drop by the studio and try their hand at ceramics. She also occasionally opens the studio for faculty and staff.

“It is a blast,” Schroer said.

Culver also offers a class called “Equine Sculpture,” taught by master instructor Jack Williams. He starts off by training students in foundations of drawing, then moves into teaching angles, then anatomy and they use oil-based clay to form the muscles they are studying.

Students say the class helps them to better understand how horses move.

“That's such a unique class, but I think really relevant to this campus with our long history of the Black Horse Troop and the horsemanship program,” she said.

Westphal, Williams and photography instructor Peter Hiatt worked with Cali Miller, the computer science and engineering chair, over the past several years to create a database of all the art in the Culver Academies collection.

 

 

“It was a Herculean effort. That database functions in such a way that you can search for any art piece in our collection and immediately be able to pull up a visual of the art piece as well as the information that we have on that piece,” Schroer said.

Schroer said it’s useful to students because it allows them to look at art from different periods.

“It lets them see how drawing and painting has evolved and how it speaks to the zeitgeist of the time. How the colors have changed. How our concept of human figures has changed over time,” she said.

The dance program at Culver teaches a variety of styles of dance with two full-time faculty: senior instructor Emily Fought and instructor Hillary Mason.

Members of the Dancevision dance troupe learn a variety of dancing styles. Last year they learned butoh, a form of Japanese dance. Two years ago, they traveled to Atlanta to dance at the Namari Dance Center, which was co-founded in 2018 by Dana Crigler ’93. They previously went to Chicago and danced with the Joffrey Ballet.

“The instructors continue to bring diverse voices into this space,” Schroer said.

The honors program in dance at Culver mimics a lot of college seminar capstone projects, Fought said. The class requires that students be members of Dancevision for at least two years, be in good academic standing and complete a core series of dance classes. They then must choreograph two dances: a solo piece that is about three minutes long and a group piece that is about four minutes long that includes design light cues and costumes and effectively communicate choreographic vision.

The program at Culver gives dancers more personalized attention than they would receive at a conservatory, Fought said.

Schroer said she believes the diversity of styles of dance students at Culver learn is what makes it stand out.

“I think ultimately that's what it allows the students to be able to do is to synthesize all of this information into their own language, their own their form,” she said.

Schroer said that while most students who come to Culver don’t intend on pursuing the arts as a career, some go on to college with that intent.

“It’s good to know that their experiences while they are here at Culver are actually opening up the possibility of that being a career option,” Schroer said.

She said the fine arts program at Culver opens students’ eyes to possibilities.

"I think it shows them that whether they end up being an audience member, an advocate, a teacher or a professional artist, there are so many varied ways to continue to engage with the arts through their lifetimes," she said.