Oberlin Launches Combined BA/BFA in Integrated Arts
February 21, 2025
Communications Staff
For generations, Oberlin graduates have gone on to become groundbreaking creative forces in artistic settings all over the world.
Now a new pairing of Oberlin degree programs enables undergraduate students to establish their own paths toward interdisciplinary careers across the arts.
Beginning in fall 2025, students may pursue a combined dual degree that culminates in a Bachelor of Arts and a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Integrated Arts. The two degrees can be completed in five years: the first four on Oberlin’s bucolic campus, followed by a fifth year set amid the vibrant professional arts community of nearby Cleveland.
“What is most inspiring about this new BA/BFA pathway is that it emerged organically,” says David Kamitsuka, Dean of Oberlin’s College of Arts and Sciences. “It developed through an extraordinary, collaborative commitment among our arts faculty to design a program that is attuned to the future of the art world and attentive to the aspirations of our endlessly creative and thoughtful students.”
Students in the program complete courses in their chosen BA major, selecting from more than 50 areas of study offered by the College of Arts and Sciences. They also take 10 additional courses in the practicing arts, which may include cinema and media, creative writing, dance, musical studies, studio art, and theater.
In year five, students live and work in Cleveland, with 24-hour access to private studios, rehearsal spaces, theaters, and production facilities. This immersive arts year is dedicated to completing a substantial, public-facing project—a performance, exhibition, or installation, for example—determined in collaboration with their Oberlin faculty mentors.
Unlike traditional BFA programs, which require selection of a single area of study, Oberlin’s BFA in Integrated Arts invites students to shape their own path by incorporating other disciplines into their individual artistic practice. In this way, painting could be paired with politics, theater with environmental studies, creative writing with neuroscience—or any number of other combinations.
Our students don’t just learn to be artists; they learn to be thinkers who engage deeply with the world around them.”
The program creates an ideal bridge between students’ academic journey and their chosen professional path—and a launching pad for a new generation of increasingly vital “thinking artists.”
“This program is built on the idea that artists thrive when they have a broad intellectual foundation,” says Program Director Julia Christensen, Oberlin’s Eva & John Young-Hunter Professor of Integrated Media. “It’s about bridging the gap between creativity and academic exploration.
“Artists don’t usually see themselves as just a painter or just a sculptor,” Christensen says. “They draw from all kinds of disciplines and backgrounds. That’s the kind of artistry we want to foster here: Our students don’t just learn to be artists; they learn to be thinkers who engage deeply with the world around them, using their creative problem-solving skills to address complex, real-world challenges.”
Current students in their first or second year of studies in the College of Arts and Sciences are eligible to participate in the BA/BFA in Integrated Arts program, with the first year of immersive art studies in Cleveland slated for 2027-28. Current Oberlin students interested in the program must apply by their junior year and be on track to finish the required credits and submit a portfolio for review.
New students applying for enrollment in fall 2026 will have the option to apply to the BA/BFA program as part of the first-year application process.
Learn more about the BA/BFA in Integrated Arts at oberlin.edu.
Thinking about Oberlin? Connect with us at college.admissions@oberlin.edu.
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