Charting a New Path

For over 15 years, Harding Fine Arts Academy has led the way in arts-integrated education for high schoolers in Oklahoma City. Our mission is to prepare students for college in an academically challenging, arts-integrated environment. Our vision is to provide educational equity through this transformative learning opportunity.

At the Academy we share a sense of purpose and values with a culture of empowerment, innovation, leadership, and teamwork. Students are encouraged to share their experiences with one another and to work together as colleagues toward a common goal. Students are expected to collaborate to accomplish tasks in leadership, academics, the arts, and co-curricular activities, whether in or out of the classroom.

And now the Firehawk Family is growing! As a public charter school overseen by a nonprofit board, the Academy requires a state agency to sponsor and authorize the school. Starting this year, the Academy will be sponsored by the University of Science and Arts of Oklahoma. As Oklahoma’s liberal arts college, the university provides a distinctive education in the liberal arts and sciences, supporting both its interdisciplinary core curriculum and major fields of study with superior teaching. Science & Arts fosters diversity of thought and practice to help students realize meaningful, purposeful, and productive lives as global citizens in a rapidly changing world.

USAO President, Dr. John Feaver

The students who are drawn to the creative and rigorous curriculum at Harding Fine Arts Academy are the very same kind of minds who thrive in the interdisciplinary atmosphere of the Science & Arts campus.

"The students who are drawn to the creative and rigorous curriculum at Harding Fine Arts Academy are the very same kind of minds who thrive in the interdisciplinary atmosphere of the Science & Arts campus,” said USAO President John Feaver. “Whether it’s our teaching education programs and the opportunities they provide, the performers and lecturers we bring to campus, or the close working relationships between students and staff, I know that this will prove a deeply symbiotic partnership that will strengthen both of our institutions in crucial ways.”

This partnership will create new opportunities to earn college credit through concurrent enrollment, share performance and exhibition spaces, and serve as a direct bridge into higher education for our students.

“We believe all students can thrive in an engaging, hands-on educational experience,” said Harding Superintendent Barry Schmelzenbach. “I am so pleased to now partner with an institution that has distinguished itself for more than a century in arts-integrated learning.”