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.
- Global Foundations in Art History (Taken during the First-Year Program)
- Modernity and Modernism (Taken during the First-Year Program)
- Reframing the History of Art
- Art Since 1945
- History of the Major (BFA only)
- Art History Elective (BFA only)
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.
| Title | Units |
|---|---|
| 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.
