At the University of St. Thomas, there are only a few art options that students have the opportunity to study and explore, such as music, storytelling and theatre. The university is missing a big one: fashion.
There is no opportunity to study fashion, whether that be a major, a minor or even a class. It shouldn’t be this way.
It was reported on the university’s Give Day website that for this year’s Tommie Give Day on November 4th, $4,321,096 was raised for the university.
Given the money that St. Thomas brings in during any given year, St. Thomas should be able to distribute the money more evenly and work towards expanding areas of study for the school.
Riham Semir is a senior studying marketing at St. Thomas, and as co-president of the fashion club. She has a strong desire to study fashion, but feels it is unrealistic without the option for it at St. Thomas.
“I can’t help but think it’s one thing I might have missed out on. It would be really great,” Semir said.
Semir acknowledged that other colleges have opportunities for fashion, like St. Catherine University.
“At St. Kate’s University, they have some fashion degrees and programs. Technically, as a St. Thomas student, you could take classes there, but it’s not advertised,” she said.
She believes courses through St. Kate’s are not a convenient option.
“It doesn’t really fit into my degree plan. If there was something that was readily available here, that would be perfect. Otherwise, it’s kind of out of the way,” Semir said.
The chair of art history and visual culture, Heather Shirey, said that she “can see it’s inconvenient to go to St. Kate’s to take classes, and it would be nice if they were offered at home, but it’s actually such a good option.”
Semir’s point and thoughts on the program through St. Kate’s are the same as mine. There are ways to get around St. Thomas’ lack of fashion studies, but it’s not ideal. Having to get transportation to St. Kate’s and to go through the process of course selection and communication with another university is a hassle.
Something offered on St. Thomas’campus where students could easily have access to the program would be much better than going elsewhere to seek those learning opportunities.
Semir said that in the Twin Cities in general, there are minimal fashion opportunities. She mentioned that there are very few schools in the Cities where fashion is offered as a subject to study, whether that be a class or a major. Many of the schools where fashion is offered are strictly an arts school, which results in the school being smaller in size. This results in a lack in other aspects of college life, such as sports, campus life and class size that many people seek.
Shirey recognized that “having a fashion degree is not extremely common.” These two circumstances of the Cities lacking fashion schools and fashion degrees seem to have an effect on one another. If there were more opportunities to study fashion, this would produce more fashion degrees.
“There’s a lot of emphasis on St. Thomas’ art history, and that could go hand in hand with it,” Semir said.
St. Thomas requires students to take a minimum of four credits in fine arts. If this is necessary, there should be more courses offered for students to choose from.
I would think that there would be many students interested in taking a fashion course. Semir agreed and said, “There’s definitely people here who would love that.” She agreed that expanding course options would pique many people’s interest.
Even just offering a few courses on fashion would likely grab the interest of many students. Since other forms of art courses are emphasized and required, the university should expand its arts selection and add a fashion program.
Avery Mikolai can be reached at mikol2197@stthomas.edu.
