Full disclosure up front: I’m a very biased music major, pipe dreaming about the future health of my department. On the other hand, I’m also a student who came to Calvin in part due to their commitment to the liberal arts, so seeing the arts at Calvin continue to flourish is important to me generally, and I believe it should be important to the university as well. 

As Calvin’s professional programs continue to grow and thrive, creating more institutional value for themselves and attracting more and more students year on year, the arts have become increasingly neglected as departments. The visual arts department is running mostly on the backs of adjunct professors, and the music department is scraping by, offering most classes every other year to keep their professors’ schedules relatively free. Music majors also were recently restructured to be accessible to students wanting to add music as a second major, but the number of music majors is still low. 

However, ensembles are thriving, visual art classes are running consistently and private music lessons are being taken by a broad slate of students — so what gives? How is it that Gospel Choir can fill the auditorium, Capella can fill the chapel and displays of art from visual courses can fill an entire hallway in the Spoelhof Center, but the number of majors in these programs keeps diminishing over time? To me, the answer is pretty straightforward. Professional programs require an enormous amount of credits, leaving students in those programs with next-to-no space for a second major, even a small one… but they do leave room for an art class, a private lesson or a music ensemble. 

To be clear: the fact that Calvin is positioning itself as an institution of higher education with elite professional programs is neither good nor bad. However, in doing so, it may be time for a revisiting of how we analyze the success of our arts programs at an institutional level. To me, Calvin should be counting the success of the arts in terms of number of participants, not in the number of majors. If we’re going to be an elite professional institution, while offering programs with little space for a music or visual art major, then we need to be counting our successes in a different way.

When one considers that over 250 students (more than our largest five majors combined) are involved in choirs on campus, to say nothing of instrumental ensembles and private lessons, it becomes clear that at least among the student body, commitment to the arts is still thriving at Calvin. Now, it’s time for the institution to reframe its metrics to reflect that commitment.