The core mission of the School of Dance is to combine exceptional artistic training with a liberal arts education. This dual dedication to art and learning has yielded graduates who are dancers, teachers, scholars, and leaders in companies, schools, universities, and art organizations in the United States and abroad. In addition to classes for dance majors, approximately 400 students are instructed each semester through the general studies in dance classes open to our university community dancers.

A seventeen million dollar renovation in 2004 transformed our home, Montgomery Hall, into a state of the art dance facility with six studio spaces, a conditioning studio, costume shop, centers for music and technology, a black box theatre, as well as the fully equipped proscenium Nancy Smith Fichter Dance Theatre which seats 380. Several concert series are presented annually including Days of Dance, Evening of Dance, and Master Thesis Projects.