MEADOWS: HEADHUNTING FOR THE ARTS

For months, we’ve been hearing that SMU’s Meadows School of the Arts was planning to compete with some of the top arts schools in the country-institutions such as Julliard School, New York University and the California Institute of the Arts. Now we’re seeing signs that, yes, SMU is serious about competing; and the Meadows School of the Arts is putting its money on it.

The school of the arts has always been financially well-endowed, but now it’s really in the green. According to Associate Dean William Lively, the arts school has the largest endowment of any of the university’s schools and has one of the largest arts endowments in the nation. When Algur H. Meadows left the endowment for the school, he placed it in General American Oil stocks. Last winter, when General American Oil was bought out for cash, the foundation’s endowment was liquidated, tripling the fund. Although Lively won’t specify the exact amount of the fund, he does say that it exceeds $30 million.

And SMU is spending this endowment on recruiting. Lively says that the Meadows School is the only school of the arts in the nation with national recruiting efforts; the “big league” schools that SMU is competing with are much older (SMU is less than 70 years old) and can stand on their reputations.

Until this year, the school’s recruiting efforts were limited to Lively’s personal on-campus appearances at various high schools. He says that during the past four years, SMU’s administration has tried to pinpoint the high schools across the country that are known for producing top arts students. Now that the list is fairly complete, SMU has taken on a new recruiting project: bringing the nation’s top performing or visual arts teachers tocampus to “experience” the Meadows School of the Arts.

Beginning last month, five programs were staged at SMU for about 100 high school drama teachers, band conductors, choir directors and other activity leaders. The cost of the five programs is about $45,000.

“The [on-campus] recruiting will make a tremendous difference, not just this year, but for a generation,” Lively says. “We’re getting the greatest instructors here to evaluate firsthand the competence of our programs. We will attract students of these teachers, wherever [the teachers] end up. We will attract them for years to come.”