From 2012-2015 (as part of the Mellon-funded SPARC project), the A2RU research team interviewed upper-level administration, faculty, and students at 38 member institutions about the impact of their arts-integration initiatives, including teaching, research, and community projects. We asked about what impact they hoped for and what impact they actually saw. The Impacts Map is a graphic representation of the categories of impact we surfaced, and a framework and logic model for connecting impacts across domains.

This arresting graphic provides a visual overview of the impacts of arts integration and interdisciplinarity in the university. It can be a tool for case-making, communication, and further inquiry.

From 2012-2015 (as part of the Mellon-funded SPARC project), the A2RU research team interviewed upper-level administration, faculty, and students at 38 member institutions about the impact of their arts-integration initiatives, including teaching, research, and community projects. We asked about what impact they hoped for and what impact they actually saw. The Impacts Map is a graphic representation of the categories of impact we surfaced, and a framework and logic model for connecting impacts across domains.

This arresting graphic provides a visual overview of the impacts of arts integration and interdisciplinarity in the university. It can be a tool for case-making, communication, and further inquiry.

This listing is for a pack of 12 maps.

From 2012-2015 (as part of the Mellon-funded SPARC project), the A2RU research team interviewed upper-level administration, faculty, and students at 38 member institutions about the impact of their arts-integration initiatives, including teaching, research, and community projects. We asked about what impact they hoped for and what impact they actually saw. The Impacts Map is a graphic representation of the categories of impact we surfaced, and a framework and logic model for connecting impacts across domains.

This arresting graphic provides a visual overview of the impacts of arts integration and interdisciplinarity in the university. It can be a tool for case-making, communication, and further inquiry.

This listing is for a pack of 5 maps.

The Case for Arts Integration is a tool for connecting across campus, outlining the “what,” “why,” and “how” of arts integration. While this book shows how arts integration can function on campus, and its range of impacts, the case it makes is broad and all-encompassing. On many campuses, a few faculty or staff are champions of arts integration. This book is designed to help them build broader support for arts integration at many levels, including among university leadership. Each university will want to define what arts integration looks like for them and how it fits into their unique cultural landscape.

Like all A2RU’s programs, The Case for Arts Integration is grounded in research and developed through integration and synthesis. This resource supports the work of arts integration on-campus, and draws on insights gathered from over 600 interviews with academic leaders, institutional officers, faculty, staff, and students at over 60 research universities. The A2RU research team systematically reviews these insights for evidence of the positive impacts, successful patterns, best practices, recurring challenges, and salient stories of arts integration.

A companion workbook, The Case for Arts Integration: Workbook, is also available as a hands-on tool designed to help you map how the arts and arts integration advances your university’s mission.

This workbook provides an introduction to the insights and questions commonly encountered by A2RU and its research university partners. The goal is to help enable better sensemaking and case-making activities around arts integration, what it means, and how it will unfold on your campus.

This workbook is designed to help you in case-making, developing a workshop, or as a common framework for benchmarking. Properly applied, the workbook will save weeks of work, provide structure and clarity for your group’s work, accelerate your ability to assemble exemplary case-making materials, and raise the quality of your messaging.

This workbook is a companion to The Case for Arts Integration book, which is recommended as a reference and source of inspiration.

A2RU research, aligned with previous scholarship, notes the need to render explicit the unspoken expectations, assumptions, and definitions involved in the reappointment, tenure, and promotion process. The Implicit/Explicit card deck is a hands-on tool to assist teams who are charged with tenure and promotion policy to accomplish this very task. Developed for and tested in our Tenure and Promotion Workshops, the deck also helps reveal latent biases that may affect equity and inclusion efforts.

Play reveals which elements of an institution’s reappointment, tenure, and promotion practices are explicitly addressed in policy and which remain tacit, and helps players recognize the cultural biases present in institutional norms, processes, and policies when they are not made explicit. Additionally, the color-coded cards helps participants identify the roles and processes that are most relevant to them.

The Alliance for the Arts in Research Universities (A2RU) fosters and champions the role of the arts and design in research universities. Underpinned by research and synthesis, our mission is connected knowledge and empowered leadership — to uphold and advance the arts and design in research, teaching, scholarship, and creative practice.

Learn more online at a2ru.org about A2RU programs, alliance partners, and how to become an A2RU partner. Discover insights and tools to support the arts and design in research universities. You can also search and browse A2RU conference abstracts, working session captures, and a wide array of supporting materials from A2RU and its alliance partnerships.

Seven facets of arts and design-driven research to span new ways of knowing, acting, experiencing, and inspiring the mission of the research university.

Diverse experiences, academic trajectories, and disciplinary backgrounds drive our understanding and interpretations of research, creative practice, and academic values. Despite its long and richly textured history, arts research is still relatively new to many academic departments and disciplines. For most practitioners, arts research is neither a formalized nor a codified process; it can take many paths. And because it can mean different things to different people, defining ‘arts research’ is a spectacular opportunity to create shared awareness, understanding and practice.

Eight epistemologies to characterize research that spans traditional activities and new practices — shaping how people will come to understand the world in the century ahead.

Because faculty and students have so many wide-ranging experiences, academic trajectories, and disciplinary backgrounds, they don’t necessarily have the same set of concepts in mind when it comes to talking about research, what it means, or how it’s done. For many, “research” is an abstract, culturally constructed concept. With many different definitions and experiences, it can be critical to build a shared foundation for understanding — especially when issues of “what counts” as knowledge, tenure and promotion, and research process are at stake.

What's Next? is a decision support tool and set of cards designed to facilitate personal research planning, as well as team-based or mentor-mentee dialogue around needs and expectations. What’s Next? helps unlock assumptions and build connections between scholarly and research interests, passions, skills, needs, and outcomes. Play encourages “thinking big” about new opportunities and for scholarship and creative research.