The North Carolina School of the Arts is a public coeucational arts conservatory in Winston-Salem, North Carolina that grants high school, undergraduate and graduate degrees. It is one of the seventeen constituent campuses of the University of North Carolina system and offers high school, undergraduate and graduate degrees. It was founded in 1963 as a conservatory of the performing arts by then-North Carolina governor Terry Sanford and was the first public arts conservatory. The school owns and operates the Stevens Center in Downtown Winston-Salem and is accredited by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools.