"What happened to the idea that universities exist to help people become better, more thoughtful, more critically engaged human beings?"
A professor asked me that question many years ago as he was abandoning higher education. He worried that universities were becoming increasingly focused on measurable outcomes, publication records, career placement, and professional advancement. His question has stayed with me ever since.
The pressures on higher education have certainly shifted over the decades. Expectations have increased. Careers matter. Research matters. Preparing students for meaningful work matters.
But those of us who work in the School of Theatre & Dance believe that the deepest purpose of a university is to help students learn how to navigate the world with integrity, imagination, and empathy.
Few disciplines are better suited to that mission than theatre and dance.
If you stop someone on the street and ask what a School of Theatre & Dance accomplishes, they'll probably tell you that we create performances.
And they're right. We do.
Every play, musical, and dance concert produced at Texas Tech is the result of extraordinary effort from students, faculty, and staff. Yet the performances themselves are not the ultimate goal. They are the vehicle through which learning occurs.
I once interviewed for a position where several designers admitted they often found teaching students frustrating. Rather than guiding students through the process, they preferred to do most of the work themselves. It certainly saved time.
But it also missed the point.
The finished production matters. The learning matters more.
Like most artists, our students arrive here because they love performance. They want to act, dance, direct, choreograph, design, and create. They dream about audiences. So do we. Faculty discussions about season selection can become surprisingly passionate when favorite titles or long-awaited musicals enter the conversation.
But beneath all of that lies a larger purpose.
At Texas Tech, we are not simply training people to create performances.
We are training human beings to rehearse ways of being in the world.
Theatre and dance are communal art forms. No one succeeds alone. Every rehearsal asks students to practice habits that extend far beyond the stage.
Students learn to listen—truly listen—not merely wait for their turn to speak.
They learn to be present, not simply in attendance, but in body, mind, and spirit.
They learn courage by standing before an audience and risking failure. They learn resilience because growth requires experimentation, and experimentation inevitably involves mistakes.
They learn generosity because no ensemble can thrive when individuals place themselves above the collective. They learn trust because performance depends upon it.
They learn attention, focus, discipline, timing, collaboration, and accountability. They learn curiosity—the willingness to ask questions, challenge assumptions, and seek deeper understanding rather than settling for easy answers.
In short, they learn the habits of engaged citizenship. And perhaps most importantly, the arts cultivate imagination.
These lessons are not separate from artistic training. They are artistic training.
While universities are often asked to prepare students for careers, the arts remind us that imagination shapes every career, every relationship, every community, and every vision of the future. Imagination helps us picture not only what we might do, but whom we might become.
That may be the most valuable form of rehearsal there is.
So, when you attend one of our productions this season—and I hope you will—I encourage you to look beyond the performance itself.
Certainly, enjoy the artistry onstage. Celebrate the talent, creativity, and accomplishment of our students, faculty, and staff.
But also remember that behind every scene, every dance phrase, every design choice, and every moment under the lights are students practicing something larger than performance. They are learning how to listen, how to collaborate, how to take risks, how to trust, and how to imagine.
The performance may last only an evening.
The rehearsal for being fully human lasts a lifetime.
[Photo by Andrea Bilkey]