CAM Studio 2023- Make it in the arts. Make it CAM.

Make it in the arts. Make it CAM.

You’ve got the talent and the passion. You want a degree. But can you turn it all into a successful career? Yes, you absolutely can.

music & entertainment industry

film & television visual

arts

studies

That’s because the College of Arts & Media (CAM) offers what it takes. Cutting-edge skills training. Valuable real-world experiences. Industry connections. And dedication to student success.

national center for media forensics

Preparing you to go far in the creative arts is our job. Yours is putting in heart, sweat, and soul, every day. The energy exchange here is catalytic, and our community is incredibly supportive.

Success is the result of the sum of our choices. Start with CAM. Choose discipline, curiosity, and opportunity. Build your skills, network, and options. With CAM behind you, you can get ahead.

What really made my experience incredible at this university, what completely changed my perspective and opened the doors to a lot of things, was being able… to have a mentor that genuinely cares about your education, pushes you further, and challenges you in a very productive way.

Ashell Fox, audio engineer, John Eargle award winner

Education designed for success

Affordable degree

Most arts schools are private and insanely expensive. Not CAM. We are public, and equity-serving. Our mission is making sure an outstanding education is available to everyone. Completing your 4-year degree creates flexibility in career choices, and on average, 68% higher annual income.2

Future readiness

Our faculty aren’t just academics, they’re successful professionals. They know what it takes, in both craft and business-savvy.

You’ll be on set, in studio, or researching Day One. It’s hands-on and collaborative. Failure is fuel, critique is inspiration. It’s real-world.

Outside insights from local collaborations, field work, internships, and skills-focused study abroad build invaluable perspective.

Professional mentors

Ask any successful artist how they made it, and they’ll tell you about someone who took them under their wing. That’s why mentoring and a supportive community are so core to our philosophy.

Industry connections

Even with a 4-year degree and marketable skills, networking, and industry connections are crucial. Our programs and professors can put you in the right place, with the right people, at the right time.

film & television

In Film & Television (FiTV), you’ll learn what it takes to tell the story from pros: screenwriting, casting, producing, production design, directing, lighting, camerawork, editing, and postproduction. And you’ll do it on everything from short films and documentaries to episodic TV and web-based media to animation and digital effects.

You’ll work in project teams because great collaboration is everything to great film, and there are hundreds of choices to make. Learning opportunities beyond campus include internships, local projects, and amazing study abroad experiences.

Our goal is making sure you know everything about the contemporary media landscape, whether your interest is artistic, technical, or the business of arts & entertainment. This includes the art of marketing yourself.

Result? Amazing internships and jobs.

When you attend the Film & Television department at the University of Colorado Denver, you could find yourself with a paid Hollywood internship.

MovieMaker Magazine, 2022

Students win Telly

Access Hollywood

Professor Eric Jewett takes FiTV students to Hollywood to experience what it’s like to live, work multiple jobs, and push themselves out there networking. It’s a great way to see if you’ve got what it takes to make your way into film.

Another perk? Practice interviews for all 48 FiTV seniors with key Denver and Hollywood professionals.

CAM’s web series project—the only of its kind among U.S. art schools—gives students hands-on experience creating an episodic film series from start to finish. Booth by the Window, last year’s “Twin Peaks” style series, earned a Silver Telly for set design.

Film & Television BFA

Film & Television Production Minor

Film & Television Writing Minor

Performance for Film & Television Minor

15 awards and counting

Loose Change, the new off-beat, award-winning comedy short by CAM instructor Andrew Bateman, was made with the help of current and former students.

Future filmmakers, can you cut it?

Hollywood? Independent film? Graduate film school? The choice is yours at FiTV. Replicating real-world filmmaking, our program is as intense and difficult as it is fun. Senior thesis film projects get a red carpet screening at Cinefest, our Student Film Awards ceremony.

As a woman, as a woman of color, and as a gay woman, I learned how powerful it is to see yourself on screen and have your story be shared in a way that other people can relate to.

Marin Lepore, screenwriter and producer

Famous alums

Learn from the best

David Liban is a filmmaker, professor, and chair. His newest movie Publish or Perish is a dark comedy about a professor who accidentally kills a student. Debuting early 2023 and created almost entirely by current and former students, it’s already picking up awards in the festival circuit.

Marin Lepore ’21, filmmaker, activist, and founder of Sad Girl Productions is one of seven alums honored in murals around campus; they are painted by world-renowned artist Thomas Evans, aka Detour, also a CU Denver alum (MBA ’12, BS ’08).

music & entertainment

CAM’s Music & Entertainment Industry Studies (MEIS) offers two impossible to find programs: an undergraduate degree with a contemporary focus and a graduate degree in Recording Arts. It’s the place to be, whether you want to be in performance, music business, or audio recording/mixing.

Our faculty are well-connected professionals who love helping students break into the industry. Learn with the best equipment and technology. You’ll find it immersive, hands-on, and heavy on feedback.

As a student here, you might find yourself on an annual trip to SXSW, publishing on Spotify, playing gigs or mixing sound around town or regionally, or taking advantage of sweet MEIS internships.

2nd year scores 1st record deal

Bryce Menchaca, second-year singer/songwriter, signed a co-publishing record deal with BMG, after his MEIS instructor, mentor, and now manager, Barton Dahl, sent his songs to a contact there. Among other well-known bands and artists, Dahl manages Denver favorite Nathaniel Rateliff. Bryce attributes his success to his transfer to CAM.

The teachers are phenomenal. The way they teach is absolutely insane — in the best way…I’ve learned a lot about how music works as a language. Plus, I like how everybody [ in Denver’s music scene ] knows each other.

Bryce Menchaca, student, singer, songwriter, signed artist

Meet our student rep

TaTiana Torres, recording arts major with a vocal performance emphasis, is our ’22/’23 Student Government Association (SGA) representative. She’s focused on cross-departmental collaboration and student engagement to help everyone fly higher.

John Eargle winner

Grad student and alum Ashell Fox ’21 won the prestigious John Eargle Award for excellence in audio and technology. As an undergrad, he researched, designed, and produced an online grad course, and co-authored a scientific paper, both with the help of his mentor, Professor Jiayue Cecilia Wu.

Music Business BS and Minor

Music Performance BS Recording Arts BS and MS

Singer / Songwriter BS

General Music Minor

Jessica Jewell, working it

Theater sound designer. Music production. Mixing. Mastering. Dialogue editing. Viola player. Violinist. Guitarist. Pianist. Digital synthesizer. Composer, thematic music. Composer, classical music. Composer, blues. Composer, rock. Business owner. ’20 alum.

Paying it forward

Study with Sean McGowan

Sean is our chair and a professor here at MEIS, which has 600 students and more than 50 faculty. He is also an award-winning fingerstyle jazz guitarist of international acclaim, with six solo albums as well as jazz instructional books and videos.

Denver’s beloved indie-rock band Wildermiss came home to play at Meow Wolf and at CAM’s LYNX camp (their third visit), where they love to guest mentor. Two of the three members are CAM music alums, Emma Cole ’16 and Caleb Thoemke ’16.

I had a wonderful 30-year career as a music publisher in Nashville. I came to CAM to pay it forward. Country music is exploding worldwide, the opportunities are real.

Dan Hodges, multi-platinum and gold music publisher, professor

Stream the dream

Catch the fire. Our Spotify “CAM Alumni, Students & Faculty” playlist’s authentic voices and break-it-open sound will make your day.

Zoe Moff is going places

Sound engineer. Freelance audio producer.

1st prize, storytelling

Congrats to Akello Stallings ’22 for his winning submission to the 2022 World Affairs’ Youth Podcast storytelling contest. Akello is now funded to develop his audio story—about his place in, and connection to, the world—into a video story.

Audio technician. Live sound engineer.

Podcast operations director. Bass player.

Session musician. Red Rocks alum.

Funk/hip-hop band leader. ’23 MEIS.

visual arts

CAM offers a wide range of cutting-edge Visual Arts programs that open doors to an even wider range of professions. Our interrelated areas of study combine scholarly and artistic work with innovative technology, contemporary theory and applied professional practices.

Your classroom is Denver. Industry leaders your teachers. Renowned artists guest mentor. It’s a supportive community of critical dialogue, scholarship, rigorous art making, and multiple mediums. And because the business-end of freelancing can be a minefield, you’ll learn the entrepreneurial business skills you’ll need to succeed.

Expand your experience helping run the Emmanuel Gallery and CU Denver’s Experience Gallery, curating exhibitions, collaborating on local and national projects, or traveling abroad for skills-focused study. These are the kind of opportunities that build networks that help land great internships and jobs.

Sculpture: An exhilarating climb

Visual Arts professor and sculptor Rian Kerrane is on a mission to mentor her students to new heights.

CAM MADE

See the quality of CAM student work on our senior thesis website cudenverbfa.com. Students also exhibit their work in photography, digital design, illustration, art practices, art history, and digital animation in a special show every year.

I believe that the best way to sustain yourself as an artist is to find your own passion rather than following trends. In the end, the only way to be disciplined and productive is to believe in oneself and pursue something that is personally meaningful.

Find your strength

Autumn Cierra ’22 chose CAM because it “offers so many artistic opportunities” and has an “extremely inclusive nature where one department or community is not valued at the expense of another”. Her fine arts work is a soul-bearing representation of the imagination, the self, and fear.

Lindsay Jacobs, Art Practices BFA ’22

The Power of the Mind, Acrylic Paint on Wood

Autumn Cierra, Photography BFA ’22

The Pentax K-1000 Journey, Analog Photography

Maria Maddocks, Digital Design BFA ’22

Darling Watercolor Paint Set, Package Design

Carol Golemboski, photographer, professor

Collaborate with an icon

World-renowned pianist Awadagin Pratt worked with digital design students and Chair Michelle Carpenter on Black in America, expressing the tension between living with the status quo and imagining new futures. Their work was featured at the CU Denver Experience Gallery where visitors could also see Pratt’s October 2021 performance through virtual reality headsets.

The [art school ] critical process and criticism is one of the single best things you get as part of a BFA and MFA... For me and others to take you seriously, you need to take yourself seriously.

’13 alum

Top ranked: 3D graphics & animation

CAM’s digital animation center is preparing next-gen animators to excel in this rapidly growing field. Equipment is state-of-the-art, instructors have big-time industry connections, and the curriculum is dynamic and highly collaborative. We outrank most private schools, without the price tag.

Ink-credible

From pre-historic to present, Professor Jeffrey brings context and significance to tattoos in his History of Tattoos and Body Art

“Big Daddy” is a trip

The art of Ed “Big Daddy” Roth, legendary artist and iconic Rat Fink creator, is crazy fun. So was the CAM student trip, led by Emmanuel Art Gallery director Jeff Lambson, to research and curate the Roth tribute show. Exploring the Utah desert’s famous earth art installations made the trip even more memorable.

Gabriel Tavarez, Digital Animation BFA ’22

Keenan Milan, Digital Animation BFA ’22

Grant Wells, Art Practices BFA ’22

Fretful Muckrakers, Dried Khajur Palm, Dried Grass, Preserved Moss, and Oil on Canvas

Nicholus Bove, Illustration BFA ’22 Ghost Rider Skateboard, Acrylic on Wood

Nicholas Dimond, Photography BFA ’22

Laura Phelps Rogers, practicing artist,

media forensics

The National Center for Media Forensics (NCMF), created in partnership with the Department of Justice, offers a Master of Science in Media Forensics (MS in MF) degree program. As AI and deep fakes threaten security around the globe, forensic science skills in collecting, analyzing, interpreting, and presenting audio, video, and image evidence are increasingly in demand. We train professionals using state-of-the-art techniques and technology to fight crime and digital disinformation, ethically and bias-free. The MS in MF graduate program is the only one in the world focused on audio, video, and image forensic analysis.

Earn while you learn

MS in MF classes can be completed while you work full-time. Classes are mostly online; in-person concentrated learning requires just five weeks over two years. Experiential learning opportunities for credit include crime lab visits and science conferences to understand how forensic media technology is used in lab procedures.

LYNX camps are hugely popular as a way for high school students to explore their interests and get a taste of life at CAM. Applications are now open and sessions fill up fast!

Live on campus with your classmates

CAM’s first-year Residential Creative Community (RCC) connects you with CAM classmates, professors, and mentors. Located right in the heart of campus, it is minutes away from classrooms, support services, restaurants, and entertainment. It’s a special space where you can live with fellow musicians, artists, filmmakers, and scholars.

After your first year, apartment-style living is available at the Lynx Crossing Residence Hall just a few blocks away. You can lock in your rate upfront, so your costs don’t change even as your living space gets larger.

Master of Science in Media Forensics

great internships

Students at CU Denver’s College of Arts & Media earn prestigious internships that serve as a pipeline to some of the most enviable jobs in the industry.

AEG Live

AMC’s “The Walking Dead”

AXS Ticketing

Colorado Creative Industries

Colorado Music Hall of Fame

Colorado Photographic Arts Center

Colorado State Senate

Comedy Works

Denver Art Museum

Disney Pixar

Guggenheim Museum, Venice, Italy

High Noon Entertainment Levitt Pavilion

Lockheed Martin

Meow Wolf: Immersive Art Experiences

MTV Networks Museum of Contemporary Art Denver

NBC Universal Rocky Mountain PBS

great jobs

Sirius Satellite Radio

Sony Music Sound Diplomacy (member network)

Take Note Colorado

The Denver Art Museum

The Keep Recording Studio Universal Music Group

Urban Peak Music Studio

Warner Bros.

Wildwood Guitars

Top curriculum and top honors mean top jobs for CAM undergraduates and masters students.

study abroad

2022 / 2023 Immersive courses

Study abroad in CAM offers students the opportunity to grow their creative world view. Our immersive short-term course experiences bring invaluable perspective to the creative process.

Czech Republic (Recording) Ireland (Interdisciplinary Art)

Cuba (Music) Japan (All disciplines)

Egypt (All disciplines) Nepal (Art, Design, and Mediation)

Being able to experience a different culture and environment while still studying what I love is an opportunity of a lifetime.

TaTiana Torres, singer, student government representative

Semester abroad: ArtsHub Asia

Semester abroad in CAM affords students the opportunity to learn in the world’s fastest growing creative economies.

Singapore Malaysia

artsandmedia.ucdenver.edu

Visit CAM

In-person tours

We offer regular campus tours that follow applicable COVID safety measures. If you have questions or want to tour on a date not listed on the schedule, please email david.walter@ucdenver.edu.

Virtual tours

We also offer online tours of our CAM spaces and virtual info sessions. To schedule an individual phone or Zoom session, email caminfo@ucdenver.edu. Apply online Please visit artsandmedia.ucdenver.edu/apply for complete application information and any additional major requirements. August 1st (Fall Semester) January 1st (Spring Semester) May 15th (Summer Semester)

Campus Box 162 PO Box 173364 Denver, CO 80217-3364

Dan Ostermiller CU Denver Lynx,