Department of Music and Theater created at Xavier

In a memo sent out this summer, it was announced that the
performing arts unit at Xavier University would combine with
the music department to form the Department of Music and
Theater. Dr. Tom Merrill, chair associate professor of music, along with Dean Janice Walker and Provost Dr. Scott Chadwick, determined a theater major should be added to the university's curriculum. Therefore, the theater minor, which was originally part of the classics department, is now part of the new Department of Music and Theater as a major. "Since Performing Arts was a part of Student Life, and not an academic program, the best way to start the new degree was to move the theatre staff and facilities into an academic program,"
Merrill said in an email. "[This] is also why Dave Zlatic [technical director of music and theater] is becoming a faculty
member, and Stephen Skiles [assistant professor and director of theater studies] has been hired as a tenure-track professor of theater. There have not been fulltime, tenure-track faculty involved in the theater program until this change."
Xavier Players will remain part of Student Life and continue to be student run. There will be two theater degrees in addition to the music degrees still being offered. The theater degrees include a Bachelor of Arts in performance and a Bachelor of Science in theater education. It is hoped they will be official in the fall of 2015. The music degrees remain the same as previous years: a Bachelor of Arts in performance and a
Bachelor of Science in music education.