Belcher College of Fine & Performing Arts

Thank you for being part of our very first One Day for Western! Check out this thank you video to hear from our campus community how much we appreciate your support. Go Cats!

Catamounts, you never cease to amaze me. The way you showed up to make one day possible was inspirational, especially in our inaugural year of this all-in giving day! 

The initial numbers are in, and we are excited to share that 1,058 donors contributed over $260,000 on One Day for Western. And we're still counting. These gifts will enable amazing projects to materialize, life-changing trips to be taken, and critical programs to continue their good work throughout our community—and it’s all because of your generosity. We cannot wait to share these impact stories with you over the next several months so you can see your investment in action. 

Thank you to everyone who gave, shared, or elevated our message on One Day for Western. We are beyond grateful for your support.

Go Cats! 

Thankfully,  

Rebekah B. Cheney 

Director of Annual Giving

Catamounts, you are SHOWING UP for One Day for Western! To ensure we maximize as many challenge gifts as possible, we're upping our donor goal to 1,000! Here's what we have left to complete before midnight:

Student Affairs

• 5 donors left to hit “per donor” challenges
• $9,325 in challenge dollars left to match

POTM

• $12,175 in challenge dollars remaining

Athletics

• 250 donors left to close out all “per donor” challenges

Belcher College of Fine and Performing Arts

• 36 donors left to close the per donor challenge
• $3,308 in challenge dollars left to match

Brinson Honors College

• 46 donors to go

College of Arts and Sciences

• 7 donors to go for Cherokee Programs Advancement Fund
• 14 donors for Literary Festival fund
• 31 donors for CAS Dean’s Fund
• $2,579 in challenge dollars for FOREST

College of Business

• Matches are completed, but more donors are needed to hit the 75 donor goal

College of Education and Allied Professions

• $44 left to go in challenge dollars

College of Engineering and Technology

• $250 left in challenge dollar

College of Health and Human Sciences

• 11 donors left for MAP Health
• $900 in challenge dollars for Speech and Hearing
• $3,675 in challenge dollars for Dean’s Fund

Hunter Library

• 223 donors to go to realize the $500 match

Other challenges:

• Monica Henson ’84: 83 donors to go (out of 84-donor challenge)
• Kae Livsey: 72 donors to go (out of 75 fac/staff donor challenge)

Thank you so much for all your advocacy and support; you help make one day possible for our students!

Prospect Cullowhee is donating $400 for each renewed or new lease signed on One Day for Western: March 29, 2023! 

As a reminder: donations will be made by Prospect Cullowhee to the tenant’s priority area of choice. Thank you again to Prospect Cullowhee for their partnership!

If you have questions on how you can take advantage of this offer, just visit the Prospect website or call 828-226-4865.

Chancellor Kelli Brown is excited for One Day for Western and we hope you are too!

Thank you in advance for your generosity and advocacy, Catamount Nation - today and every day. Let's make our very first One Day for Western a day to remember. GO CATS!

Hear from past Friends of the Arts (FOA) presidents Jeanne McGuire and Terry Welch on why it's important to join the Friends of the Arts - on One Day for Western and beyond!

"Cara Romero is an enrolled citizen of the federally recognized Chemehuevi Indian Tribe. Romero’s identity informs her photography, a blend of fine art and editorial photography, shaped by years of study and a visceral approach to representing Indigenous and non-Indigenous cultural memory, collective history, and lived experiences from a Native American female perspective.” – Cara Romero Photography

From an article about this work in NewMexico Magazine: “Visually, the photograph was strong, because it could be so many things,” Romero says of Water Memory. “It draws out that universal thread of the Great Flood. But I’m also from a tribe that was flooded out of ancestral lands—the Army Corps of Engineers actually forcefully dragged people out of their homes to create Lake Havasu. The oral histories tell of how there were already inches of water in people’s homes before they were made to leave. Now Lake Havasu feels haunted—there are homes and floodplains below—and when I submerge myself there, I feel all that water memory.”

The WCU Fine Art Museum's purchase of Water Memory was made possible by the WCU Office of the Dean of the Belcher College of Fine and Performing Arts, the WCU Campus Theme Committee, and the Fund for Building and Sustaining Equity in Collections. 

Water Memory was the first purchase supported by this fund. Please consider supporting the WCU Fine Art Museum Fund for Building and Sustaining Equity in Collections on One Day for Western because representation in our museums matter.

Cara Romero, Water Memory, 2015, printer’s proof 2/2, archival pigment print on Legacy Platine paper, 40 x 40 inches. Museum purchase. © Cara Romero. Image courtesy of the artist. All rights reserved

In support of One Day for Western, Prospect Cullowhee is donating $200 for each renewed or new lease signed by March 29, 2023. The donations will be made by Prospect Cullowhee to the tenant’s priority area of choice. We are grateful for their partnership and cannot wait to see what students are excited to support on One Day for Western! 

If you have questions on how you can take advantage of this offer, just visit the Prospect website or call 828-226-4865.

IMPACTFUL! That is the best way to describe the magnitude of importance the Friends of the Arts (FOA) has on the lives of the students in the David Orr Belcher College of Fine and Performing Arts. Over the past 13 years, the FOA has created an endowed scholarship currently valued at $269,114.26 that supports talented young artists across the disciplines of the college. The generosity from the members of the FOA has enabled the Belcher College to create unique learning opportunities that allow these students to develop their talents and artistic skills by making art, music, theatre, film, and dance from their first day on campus. They are able to study with outstanding faculty, who are all professional artist practitioners and scholars, and work with world class guest artists supported by the FOA. As a result, our students get to explore the world near and far through their art, and we bring that world to Cullowhee to share with our community through the performances and exhibitions presented in the Bardo Arts Center. Impactful and powerful when you consider the thousands of lives transformed by the members of this dynamic affinity group dedicated to advancing the academic and artistic mission of the Belcher College.

During this One Day for Western, we ask you to continue making an impact on the lives of our students by renewing or beginning your membership in the Friends of the Arts for the 2023-24 academic year. You can find out more about the Friends of the Arts, including the benefits of membership, by visiting foa.wcu.edu.  

What does it mean to be seen? To be heard? To see yourself in another?

Since 2019, WCU Fine Art Museum staff and WCU students have been researching artists in the Museum’s collection. Like so many other collecting institutions, our research determined that the Museum’s collection lacks representation by artists of color, women artists, and LGBTQ+ artists.

In 2020, we established the Fund for Building and Sustaining Equity in Collections in recognition of an urgency to address inequities in the WCU Fine Art Museum collection. Though we have made strides over the years through initiatives like Cultivating Collections, we recognize that museums play a role in determining what our society remembers, whose stories are told, and what objects are deemed worthy of consideration.

By giving to this fund on One Day for Western, you are amplifying the voices of historically marginalized artists and ensuring that their stories are shared with our campus community and the greater Western North Carolina region. Thank you for your generous support!