School of Arts and Communication was founded in May 2006. Now Comrade Jin Xi serves as the secretary of the Party Committee, and Professor He Qingjun serves as the dean.
At present, this School has 77 faculty members, among which there are 69 full-time teachers, including 3 professors and 36 associate professors. There are 32 faculty members with the doctor’s degree and one “CUG Scholars” discipline backbone talent. This School has the Department of Landscape Science, Department of Visual and Media Design, Department of Journalism and Communication, and Department of Music, with five undergraduate majors including Environmental Design, Visual Communication Design, Digital Media Arts, Radio and Television Journalism and Musicology. The School has two first-level master’s degree programs in journalism and communication and design, a second-level doctoral and master’s degree program in environmental planning and design, and a professional degree program for Master of Fine Arts (MFA), and is also responsible for the construction of design science which is a key discipline in Hubei Province. There are 947 undergraduate students and 479 graduate students in school, including 350 full-time and 108 part-time graduate students.
The School has a complete experimental teaching system, an indoor exhibition hall with advanced equipment, beautiful sketching bases and an industry-university-research internship base jointly built by well-known enterprises and institutions in the industry, which strongly support the talent training quality. The total value of experimental teaching equipment is more than 12 million, the professional concert hall can accommodate 650 people, and the art exhibition hall covers nearly 1,000 square meters. A number of sketching practice bases with beautiful scenery, convenient transportation and safe accommodation are constructed in Mount Huangshan, Wuyuan, Lushan Mountain, Zigui and Chibi. The industry-university-research internship base is jointly built with CCTV, Hubei Daily Media Group, Hubei TV, and Hubei General Institute of Planning and Design.
The School is a national experimental zone for talent training mode innovation of “Environmental Art Design based on Natural Landscape Resources” approved by the Ministry of Education, and is the construction unit of the Applied Electronic Music Research Center of China Electronic Music Society, Hubei University Art Creation and Research Center, Hubei Science and Technology Communication Society, Natural History and Culture Research and Dissemination Center and Digital Art Experimental Teaching Center of the University. It has a certain academic influence in Hubei Province and the whole country.
The School actively promotes international exchange and cooperation, maintains close relations with Alfred University and Bryant University in the United States, the Barcelona School of Architecture in Spain, Accademia di belle arti di Roma, Université Paris Diderot-Paris 7, the Seine Valley School of Architecture, the Versailles School of Architecture and Konkuk University, and actively carries out activities such as student and faculty visits, project cooperation, art exchanges and cultural promotion. The School has a certain international influence and been invited to perform and exchange in Europe, America, Southeast Asia and other countries or regions for many times.
Students are well employed, and many outstanding graduates are employed in mainstream media such as Xinhua News Agency, People’s Daily, CCTV, Nanfang Daily, famous design agencies such as Atkins Design Group, famous Internet enterprises such as Baidu, Tencent, Alibaba, Sina and NetEase, and some literary and art groups, various schools, film and television companies and state organs, enterprises and institutions. In the past three years, nearly 40% of the graduates have been recommended to or admitted to first-class universities at home and abroad to study for a master’s degree, and the average annual employment rate of graduates is over 96%.