Educational Experience

Regardless of discipline, the educational experience at Purchase College is designed to have outstanding outcomes. Students are empowered to push boundaries and make profound breakthroughs. The culmination of our undergraduate education is an eight-credit, faculty-mentored project that every senior is required to complete; the work is discipline-specific and provides the kind of hands-on interaction valued by graduate schools and employers.

To support their progressive endeavors, we outfit our facilities with equipment, materials, tools, and technologies. However, the annual investment of more than $700,000 rarely covers basic requests: bronze for a sculpture, fabric for a costume, laboratory apparatus and supplies, cameras and microphones, audio and film editing software, and more. Keeping pace with rapidly changing technologies is especially expensive and remains an ongoing challenge if our graduates are to be current as they enter the workforce.

As with most colleges, the funding of these production resources falls outside the operating budget. For Purchase College and its students, the burden is heavy.

Private funding will help assure that our students have the resources they need to create an art installation, choreograph a ballet, produce a theatrical performance, build a robot, or conduct a scientific experiment.

Examples of Production Expenses

  • Art and laboratory supplies
  • Specialized equipment
  • Set design materials
  • Software and technology updates
  • Choreographers, composers and writers for original works
  • Travel subsidies for internships or field experience
  • Facilities and staff expenses for performance spaces

We focus on creating new work on campus.

Exceptional Facilities and Faculty Relationships

Exceptional facilities and faculty relationships draw renowned artists and scholars to the Purchase College campus to create thought-provoking contemporary work. Whether they span the course of a day, a week, or a semester, these residencies serve to instruct, inspire, and prepare our students as professionals in their own right.

Philanthropic investment in Art+Design, Dance, Music, or Theatre Arts will help expand our artist-in-residency programs and partnerships to attract prominent choreographers, dancers, playwrights, printmakers, composers, filmmakers, and other artists.

Private funds will also underwrite our lectures and Master Class series with professionals from various disciplines, including our own alumni.

We will recruit and host professionals in need of a workspace on the condition that students be engaged to work along-side them as part of the learning process. We will also seek to place these artists, scientists, and scholars center stage for conversations and learning situations with audiences comprised of both students and members of the community.

More Information

For more information about a gift to support the student learning experience at Purchase College, please contact Tracy Calvan, Director of Development, via e-mail (tracy.calvan@purchase.edu) or phone (914.251.6038).