California Institute of the Arts

The California Institute of the Arts is a private conservatory in Valencia, California, in the Santa Clarita Valley north of Los Angeles. Walt Disney and Roy O. Disney established it in 1961 by merging the Chouinard Art Institute and the Los Angeles Conservatory of Music, and the Valencia campus opened in 1970. The institute is a specialist school of the visual and performing arts, not a general university.

Six schools house Art, Critical Studies, Dance, Film and Video, Music, and Theater. The Master of Fine Arts is the main graduate credential, including character animation, experimental animation, film directing, music, dance, and theater design and performance. The School of Film/Video and the Herb Alpert School of Music draw many graduate applicants. Teaching takes place in studios, sound stages, screening rooms, and theaters on campus.

Enrollment is about 1,500 students, with graduates a large share of the total because the M.F.A. is the school's core degree. Students come from across the United States and from dozens of other countries. Faculty members are practicing artists. Alumni include filmmakers Tim Burton and Sofia Coppola and animation director John Lasseter.

Graduate study is organized around the studio, the rehearsal, and the critique rather than around large lecture courses. The M.F.A. is the usual terminal degree; some fields offer an M.A. The calendar is two semesters. Students work on a compact campus in Valencia and travel into Los Angeles for internships, festivals, and productions.

In the Grad School Navigator directory, California Institute of the Arts lists 3 graduate programs in environmental design and film & filmmaking, all of them master's programs.