Vision: To become a distinctive college of the arts and design that is recognized for educating artists and designers who attain the highest level of professional leadership and personal achievement, and thereby are seen as a creative force.]

Mission: The College of Art and Design is Louisiana’s foremost school for the fine arts, art history, and the design professions.  We educate a diverse population by constructing a distinctive learning community that leads to artists, designers, and scholars who are both creative and productive as measured by a life work that advances and sustains society.  Through our research, criticism, and creative activity we will advance the role of the artist/designer in the professions, to the broader community, and, with our students and alumni, partake in the concerns of the global community.]

The College of Art and Design achieves this mission through:

The College of Art and Design is a community of engaged students and faculty committed to speculative endeavors in all aspects of the visual arts and design disciplines.]

The College promotes fundamental practices while recognizing the challenges of creative activity are met by mining traditional disciplines and through explorations of the boundaries between disciplines.]

The College of Art and Design recognizes that critical investigations in art and design occur in a context of regional, national, and global concerns.  These contexts are meaningful only when referenced to a framework of one’s immediate cultural and physical context.  The College faculty instructs in the construction of frames of reference through general education, discipline specific education, interdisciplinary investigations, creative activities, colloquia, and community outreach.]

The College’s student and faculty collaborators value inquiry based learning, encourage a spirit of risk taking, excite an appetite for thinking and making, nurture a capacity to create, and passionately pursue the means to capitalize on the opportunities thereby presented.]

Advance the appreciation of the arts and design in the broader community through distinctive public education, symposia, and exhibition programs that serve the citizens of Louisiana with an enriched appreciation of local, national, and international culture.]