Mason Gross School of the Arts is home to researchers who are forging new understandings of and through the arts. As a school, we view the study and practice of the arts as inseparable and equally important forms of research, since both study and practice have the potential to create new knowledge. Some of our faculty members engage in research by writing groundbreaking studies of the history, theory, perception, meaning, and practice of the arts across time periods and cultural contexts. Other faculty members at Mason Gross use their artistic media—from musical composition to dance improvisation, from documentary filmmaking to sculpture—to explore ideas and pressing issues confronting society today. Rooting their artistic practice in broad understandings and committed engagement with the world around them, these faculty members create art that challenges audiences and viewers to rethink the world and their place in it. While every research project and area are different, the Mason Gross Future Roadmap [PDF] has laid out a vision for collaborative and community-engaged research that will advance interdisciplinary thinking and advance the public good. To discuss possible research collaborations, please contact Stephanie Cronenberg, director of research at Mason Gross.

Yes! At Mason Gross, our world-renowned faculty guide their students to participate in innovative research in many contexts. Students learn to ask productive questions and develop new paradigms that will shape their disciplines and help to address the most pressing issues facing our society. Undergraduate students work with faculty to create new work that pushes at the boundaries of their fields, and they are also encouraged to participate in university-wide programs like Byrne First-Year Seminars and the Aresty Research Assistant Program to develop the habits and skills of researchers. Students in our rigorous, pioneering graduate programs learn to participate in the most current practices and conversations in their fields.

Arts-integrated research involves the incorporation of arts mindsets—“the mindsets and practices of creativity and making”—into interdisciplinary research. We believe that every research initiative in every discipline can benefit from arts integration, since the arts offer new ways to perceive, comprehend, communicate, inspire, galvanize, and advocate.  To spark new collaborative, arts-integrated research, Mason Gross School of the Arts recently developed a model for “speed networking,” which we implemented for the first time in 2021, first with the Rutgers School of Public Health and then with the School of Environmental and Biological Sciences. These “speed networking” programs have yielded early funding successes through an internal seed grant opportunity and through the Rutgers Research Council, and this system has since been adopted as a campus-wide model by the Office of the Vice Provost for Research at Rutgers-New Brunswick and a signature “Excellence” program by the Office of the President.  

Rutgers University has signaled its commitment to arts-integrated research by becoming a member of a2ru (the Alliance for the Arts in Research Universities), a national consortium of research universities seeking to advance arts-integrated research and pedagogy.

The Documentary Film Lab collaborates with researchers across the university and around the world, engaging students in creating documentaries about pressing issues in the sciences, in the history of our local community, and other topics of widespread importance and concern.

Faculty and students at Mason Gross School of the Arts are engaged in work at the leading edge of the field of Environmental Arts. Our efforts in this area are now coalescing into major initiatives—many of them in collaboration with our colleagues at the School of Environmental and Biological Sciences—in the areas of artistic research, curriculum, and public programming.

The Integrated Dance Collaboratory is a hub of interdisciplinary research exploring dance’s unique rehabilitative potential for individuals with a wide range of physical and mental health conditions such as autism, traumatic brain injury, cerebral palsy, stroke, chronic pain and fibromyalgia, mental illness, and cognitive decline.

The research-driven Rutgers Print Collaborative cultivates an experiential learning environment for publication, education, and the advancement of prints/multiples. The studio provides guest artists the environment and resources to research topics based on current social issues in the art world—and world at large—through the catalyst of student interaction and experimentation. 

Maximum funding amounts are determined by the rank of the faculty member applying for support, with priority given to the professional development of pre-promotion research faculty:

• Group 1: assistant professors on the tenure track and professional practice track: $2,000
• Group 2: associate, full, and distinguished professors on the tenure track and professional practice track: $1,500
• Group 3: lecturers, teaching-track instructors, and teaching-track assistant, associate, and full professors: $1,000

All school-supported travel must be booked through the Rutgers Travel Online Booking Tool. Receipts for approved expenses must be submitted via Rutgers Expense Management, accessible through the myRutgers portal, within 30 days of the expenditure and no later than June 30 of the academic year in which the funds are awarded. If receipts are not submitted by June 30 of that year, the funds will be counted against that faculty member’s professional activity expenses for the following year.

Faculty members applying for support from the Research & Professional Activity Fund must apply via the link below. The application will be reviewed first by the department chair/director and then by the director of research, who will make funding recommendations to the dean. The final decision rests with the dean. Applicants should expect to receive a response within two weeks of submitting their forms.