The Department of Art offers a wide variety of courses for majors and non-majors. In studio art, two academic degrees are offered: (1) the BA, either 24-credit or 42-credit; and (2) the BFA (61 credits). Students must be admitted to the BFA program through the Art Department after completion of the 42-credit Studio Art Major. Please see the BFA page for details on that program. The department’s broad range of studio courses begins with Art Foundations-Seeing, Thinking, Making (ARTLA 20100), the foundational courses for all studio courses. In the beginning classes, the student learns the basic principles of various media; the advanced courses emphasize individual exploration.
The 24-credit major is recommended to students interested in studio art as part of a liberal arts education, and students who wish to make studio art part of a double major. It begins with ARTLA 20100, followed by an additional 21 credits selected from 20000- and 30000-level ARTCR courses. The 42-credit major is an intensive major recommended for students who prefer a greater concentration in studio art, and particularly for the student who plans to do the BFA or to pursue graduate study in art. This major consists of 14 courses in total; 11 courses of studio art (33 credits), including 2 courses (6 credits) in the foundation courses, and 3 courses of art history (9 credits). Of the 33 studio credits, at least nine must be taken in the student’s area of concentration. Studio Art offers concentrations in: Ceramics, Drawing, New Genres, Painting, Photography, Printmaking, and Sculpture.
Program Learning Outcomes
24 Credit Studio Art Major
- Students will acquire a working knowledge of the basic technical skills and formal concerns pertinent to two or more areas of concentration.
- Students will develop a basic ability to articulate concepts regarding the application of such skills and concerns to a variety of expressive goals.
- Students will acquire a basic ability to recognize how the formal concerns fundamental to visual languages can correspond to social and ideological contexts, especially in relation to individual identity in a diverse world.
- Students will develop some knowledge of the connection between art practices in the contemporary context and their own art production.
42 Credit Major
- Students will acquire a thorough working knowledge of formal organizational and contextual concerns and selected technical skills in one area of concentration.
- Students will acquire fundamental working knowledge of one or more other areas of concentration and seek to correlate this knowledge to that acquired in #1.
- Students will acquire art historical knowledge and seek correlations between that knowledge and their own creative activity and that of their peers.
- Students will study and apply pertinent critical discourses to their own work and that of their peers. The linking of critical discourses to a broad understanding of modern art and cultural production will provide a necessary backdrop for these studies.
- Students will initiate the application of the critical knowledge and constructional skills acquired by fulfilling course requirements to a self-defining body of individual work driven by the student’s own concepts, motivation and self-understanding