<p>My d and I attended accepted student day at Rider University today. Since there have been few updates on this thread recently, I thought I would share what we learned about the Musical Theatre (BM-MT) at Westminster Arts today. This is definitely a program on the grow, they announced hiring 2-3 tenure track profs for fall and the construction of a new theatre building will be completed as well. The program has completely moved to the Lawrenceville campus and they are offering more dance and acting classes in the major and on campus. The music program continues to be very strong with 8 voice teachers who come to campus from WCC to teach lessons. They also announced that in the coming year students will have the option to follow a BFA track or continue with the BM depending on their interest in the amount of music they want to study. The students showed us the recently renovated Lake dorm where the arts learning community is housed and most freshman MT students opt to live. We were impressed by the brand new practice rooms on the ground floor of the dorm with steinway pianos and state of the art electronic acoustics. The faculty are all very warm and welcoming. They stated that there are 6 productions per year run by the department and that the arts fraternity/sorority stage another 3 student productions per year. The location of the program seems very good near Princeton on the Philadelphia/New York corridor. I hope others might find the information useful and consider adding this program to their list. If anyone else has any additional info or corrections from their contacts please feel free to add to the thread.</p>
<p>My D and I attended the accepted students day on April 16th and had an equally positive experience. We were both impressed by the obvious thought and care that has gone into building this program, particularly as it relates to the training and experience required to encourage the development of true triple threats. If I understood the head of the department correctly they are working to bring on a total of 5 new people before the start of fall term to support the program in different capacities. We also learned that the school plans to offer music theory online over the summer to accepted MT students to give them the opportunity to jump start their learning (or complete that requirement to make room for something else in the fall), should they choose to. My D is a long time dancer so she was particularly happy to hear about the efforts that are underway to build up the dance component of the program. </p>
<p>The current students we spoke with seemed to be genuinely happy and were clearly supportive of each other. That, along with the high level of commitment from the faculty, was an important factor for my D and will most likely weigh heavily into her final decision.</p>