The School of Fine Arts grew out of the Department of Picture Drawing of Central China Normal College established in 1952, was then resumed as Department of Fine Arts in 1985, and was finally established as the School of Fine Arts on the basis of the formal department in April 2004. The school consists of the Department of Fine Arts, Art Design, Visual Arts, the Center of City's Image and Contemporary Arts and the Art Institute of Culture. Now it opens five undergraduate majors including the Arts Education (Fine Art), Visual Communication Design, Environmental Design, Animation and Drawing, and two course modules for master's degree involving Fine Arts and Design Arts. In 2008, the Fine Arts was constructed as a project toward one of the key disciplines of Hubei Province. In the School of Fine Arts, there are 72 staff members, 59 professional teachers including 21 professors and associate professors, 32 lecturers and 6 assistants. More than 90 percent teachers have got master’s degree and/or doctor’s degree. There are 10 master instructors among in-service teachers. We have undertaken and completed the National Social Science Foundation of planning issues, Humanities and Social Science Planning Project from Ministry of Education and many other social science research projects from Hubei Province. Works from both teachers and students have participated in domestic and international exhibitions and have gotten many awards. The School of Fine Arts, as an important base for education and research in central China, have trained a large number of outstanding teachers and specialized personnel. In addition, the employment rate of graduates has maintained at above 95% in recent years. The School of Fine Arts, to meet the goal of establishing a high-standard comprehensive and research-based higher educational institution featuring teachers’ education, has made an overall development plan for multiple disciplines, and reestablished the general target for its construction and development. By doing so, it seeks to give prominence to art education, while actively expanding growth space for design, animation and plastic arts, so as to build the school into a first-class research-based and innovation-oriented institution which combines art education and creation with applied arts.
