Feature photo By Cole Ames
By Cole Ames
Matt Hodge is a professor at William Peace University who heads the interdisciplinary arts department. He has a love for all things within the fine arts and a passion for teaching.
Hodges’ love for the arts started when he was young. Later in life, it would blossom into a love for teaching about the arts as well.
“I started off with music first. I took piano lessons when I was a kid, and I did band all through school,” said Hodge. “Then, as I got into high school and college, along with music, I also got into theater and English literature, and my sister, who’s really talented at visual art, so the older I got, the more I loved kind of the combination of arts.”
Hodge’s interdisciplinary arts program allows a wide range of subjects within the arts, allowing students to focus on a specific subset to pursue. He teaches arts, theatre, and music classes.
In an email sent to students in the IDA program, Wade Newhouse shared the news that Professor Hodge would be leaving Peace University to move to Pittsburgh after his marriage.
The email did not mention that while Professor Hodge will be leaving his position as head of interdisciplinary arts, he will continue to teach online classes.
“I’m very excited to still get to be part of the peace family,” said Professor Hodge. “Currently, the online program that we have, the Peace Online, does not have an interdisciplinary arts major. It includes some interdisciplinary arts classes because they count as Gen Ed things,” said Newhouse.
Newhouse has been a colleague of Professor Hodge for the past decade and is currently handling the hiring of the new Interdisciplinary Arts Heads.
“They may not all match his passion for the arts, but I suspect that at least some of them will match some kind of passion,” said Newhouse. “What they might not match is the specific diversity of his passion for the specific arts.”