Core Curriculum

BA Core Curriculum

Encompassing the First-Year Program, the liberal arts requirement, and the art history requirement, our Core Curriculum helps students build foundational skills in research, critical thinking, and in written and visual expression. By taking classes in a variety of fields, students learn the scope of the school’s departments and resources, and arrive at a more complex, contextual understanding of their artistic practice. Throughout our Core Curriculum, courses are designed to explore areas of intersection between the humanities and social/natural sciences and the visual arts.

BFA Core Curriculum

Encompassing the Contemporary Practice course, the liberal arts requirement, and the art history requirement, our Core Curriculum helps students build foundational skills in research, critical thinking, and in written and visual expression. By taking classes in a variety of fields, students learn the scope of the school’s departments and resources, and arrive at a more complex, contextual understanding of their artistic practice. Throughout the Core Curriculum courses are designed to explore areas of intersection between the humanities and social/natural sciences and the visual arts.

First-Year Program

First-year students enroll in a full complement of 100 level studio and academic courses that lay the foundation for advanced study in our major and minor disciplines.

Our First­-Year Program enhances skills in research, critical thinking, and written/visual expression, and challenges students to move beyond assumptions about what art is and can be with questions such as:

  • How do artists translate raw experience into expressive form? 
  • How does imagination connect with analysis to deepen meaning? 
  • What historical narratives support creative work?
  • How can an artist engage with society beyond the borders of art’s conventional spaces of exhibition in the studio, gallery, and museum? 
  • What are the many ways to address audience and what does the audience bring to art?

 

First-­Year Program Curriculum

Fall 2016 Spring 2017
Global Art History (3 units) Modernity and Modernism (3 units)
English Composition A (Investigation and Writing) (3 units) English Composition B (Nonfiction Writing) (3 units)

Contemporary Practice (3 units)

 100-­level elective course (3 units)
100-­level elective course (3 units) 100­-level elective course (3 units)
100­-level elective course (3 units) 100-­level elective course (3 units)

Art History 

Required Art History courses provide an in-depth, critical understanding of important ideas, institutions, and discourses surrounding global art and culture.

  • Topics and Foundations in Global Visual Culture (Taken during the First­-Year Program)
  • Topics and Foundations in Contemporary Art (Taken during the First­-Year Program)
  • History of the Major (BFA only)
  • Art History Elective

Liberal Arts 

Our Liberal Arts requirements offer grounding in the humanities and the social and natural sciences. The sequence of courses emphasizing critical thinking, reading, and writing allows a student to arrive at a more complex understanding and experience of their practice in light of literature, history, philosophy, criticism, and art history. Some courses taken during the First­-Year Program fulfill liberal arts requirements.

Liberal Arts Requirements 33
English Composition A 3
English Composition B 3
Humanities 6
Mathematics or Science 3
Social Science 3
Studies in Global Cultures 3
Critical Theory A 3
Critical Theory B 3
Elective 6

Breadth

The following are Breadth requirements for all undergraduate students.

TitleUnits
Global Cultures (required for BFA and BA)0
Off-Campus (required for BFA and BA)0
Drawing (required for BFA)0
Media (required for BFA)0

Faculty

Nicole Archer
Robin Ballinger
Claire Daigle
Meredith Tromble

See the full list of current faculty.

Program Learning Outcomes

  • Develop sound reading, critical thinking, argumentative and writing skills.
  • Understand mathematical and scientific modes of inquiry.
  • Learn to situate ideas, values, traditions, and life ways in their historical and discursive contexts.
  • Grasp and apply interpretive methodologies and theoretical frameworks to understand complex texts and events.
  • Gain perspectives on diverse, non-hegemonic experiences, knowledges, and subject positions.
  • Explore connections between academic coursework and studio practice.