The profile of ASU’s playwriting program continued its dramatic rise as students, alumni and program faculty gained national attention for their work.
Guillermo Reyes, assistant professor of theatre, was honored with the Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival award for teaching. He oversees the school’s playwriting program, which is part of ASU’s creative writing program that is ranked among the top 20 in the nation. Reyes was recognized for encouraging younger playwrights and new play development, and for establishing the biennial Arizona Playwrights Contest. Reyes started the contest in 1998 to recognize the unpublished work of Arizona playwrights. 
M.F.A. playwriting students brought honor to the program recently as well.
Paul North won first prize in the Wichita State University college playwrights contest. North won for his play The House Where Nobody Lives, a surreal story set in a house where people live in limbo as they await their entry into the next world.
“This puts a student from our program up with the very best in the country—a real honor both for Paul and the program itself,” noted Reyes.
Carlos Manuel Chavarria was named an M.F.A. summer fellow by ASU’s Virginia G. Piper Center for Creative Writing. Chavarria received a stipend to spend his summer participating in research and developing his talents.
Alumna Trista Baldwin (M.F.A., playwriting, 1999) received the Jerome Fellowship from the Playwrights Center of Minneapolis. As a fellow, she participated in a year-long residency in Minneapolis with the funds and services to help her develop her craft. Baldwin already is regarded as an up-and-coming U.S. playwright. Her plays have been produced and developed in New York City, Chicago, Los Angeles and Australia. Her play Patty Red Pants was named Best Off-Off Broadway Play of 2003 by Show Business Weekly and selected for the National New Play Network’s 2004 New Play Showcase.
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is established. By 2006, it will have grown to include partnerships at 46 sites, including ArtsBridge, a collaboration among 14 universities in the country partnering with public schools to provide quality K-12 arts education. 
The college is named The Katherine K. Herberger College of Fine Arts in recognition of Valley philanthropist Kax Herberger. Her $12 million was the largest personal gift given to the university at the time. Photo: Paolo Vescia. 
Kurt Weiser (art) is named college’s third Regents’ Professor.
Kurt Weiser, Continental Drift, 2005. 
Multi-million dollar gifts by Evelyn Smith and her family endow faculty positions and graduate fellowships throughout the college. Their generosity is recognized with the naming of the Evelyn Smith Music Theatre. The same year David Katzin gives $500,000 to name Katzin Concert Hall and provide endowed programming.
Art in America lists ASU Art Museum as the “single most impressive venue for contemporary art in Arizona.”
Doc Severinsen becomes the first artist to hold the Katherine K. Herberger Heritage Chair for Visiting Artists, followed by Gunther Schuller and the St. Lawrence String Quartet.
Mark Klett (art) is named the college’s fourth Regents’ Professor. 
ArtWalk, the first alumni art festival becomes an annual fixture of ASU Homecoming.
School of Art M.F.A. program leaps to 13th in the nation by U.S. News & World Report. Specialty areas also received special recognition: printmaking, ceramics, and photography.
School of Art begins a joint Ph.D. in art history and theory with the University of Arizona.
Graduate programs in Music, Art and Theatre are nationally ranked by U.S. News & World Report. 
Professional Connections Office, later to be called
Student Success, is established to aid students in gaining on-the-job experience and post-graduation placement.
The Office of Public Art is created to administer the college’s growing public arts program.
Luis Jimenez, Southwest Pieta, 1987.
The Ceramics Research Center, under the auspices of the ASU Art Museum, is created by the Board of Regents. 
Arts, Media and Engineering experiential media graduate program is created in conjunction with Fulton School of Engineering. 
motione premieres at ASU then debuts in Lincoln Center, garnering repeated coverage in The New York Times.
College initiates certificate program in Public Art.
Stanton Sears and Andrea Myklebust, Prickly/Prickly/Prickly/Prickly/Spiny, 2005.
College celebrates 40th anniversary.