The department of Art & Design provides its students, the institution, and the surrounding community with academic and cultural programs. The cultural programs carry the arts and art education to the community as well as bringing the community to engage in the arts at Chicago State University.

The academic programs are consistent with the missions of the College of Arts and Sciences and the University. As such, the programs are knowledge-based, articulated, shared, coherent, and continuously evaluated.

The particular mission of the Department of Art & Design is to make art an integral part of a Liberal Arts education. The arts add aesthetic to function, creative problem solving to the world's concerns, and cultural literacy to a multi-cultural world. Our task continues to be one of preparing our students in both professional courses as well as in the general education components, to be knowledgeable, enthusiastic, imaginative, creative contributors to our socially, politically and technologically changing environment. Every program is designed with the goal to serve underrepresented students.

Our department will continue to expose students to the professional and occupational roles of artists, as well as the history and uses for artistic media in an ever-changing society. Students will be taught the value of research and discovery through the exploration of a comprehensive range of materials and processes. They will continue to be taught that intellectual growth and free experimentation, built from a strong foundation of art and design fundamentals, are necessary bases for learning to control and ultimately apply one's abilities. Students will learn that art making is a personal (artistic) statement and vision.