Undergraduate Degree Requirements

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.

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

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

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 lifeways 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, knowledge, and subject positions.
  • Explore connections between academic coursework and studio practice.

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