Areas of Study

A studio art degree prepares you for the creative life you plan to live and opens the door to an inventive career full of exploration, critical thinking, and a practice based in hands-on making

Students in our Art Education program spend their first two years studying the fundamentals of studio art. Before graduation, they’ll participate in a group exhibition.

Visual perception is essential to success in many careers. The ability to accurately observe the visual world and articulate its meaning are valuable skills in a broad range of fields including law, medicine, information technology, education, and museum work.

Students can emphasize areas like commercial photography or graphic design, or take coursework in web design and development, professional printmaking, or animation and fabrication.

Where will creativity take you? 

Candidates admitted to the graduate program in Art Education are expected to have completed course work equivalent to an undergraduate major in Art Education (in no case less than 18 hours in Art Education and Education, 12 hours in Art History, and 18 hours in Art Studio).

The curriculum is structured to provide both breadth and depth of inquiry through a variety of approaches to art history and, more broadly, visual studies.

Contemporary curatorial practice has expanded to embrace creative modes of selecting, presenting, and framing a vast array of cultural products, including artworks.  

Students may choose between a broad-based introduction to studio arts or a more focused concentration in a specific medium such as ceramics, drawing, intermedia, fiber, painting, printmaking, or sculpture.

Art History is a particularly good minor for students majoring in other fields in the the humanities or the arts. Students from any college may choose to minor in Art History.

With over a billion photographs being created everyday, it has never been more important to understand how to make compelling images.

The Visual Studies Minor curriculum teaches critical viewing skills to prepare students to successfully interpret and navigate the visual complexity of the 21st century, both inside and outside the workplace. Students from any college may choose to minor in Visual Studies.

The minor in Digital Media Design offers students the opportunity to study and practice a broad range of digital applications in the fields of graphic design, video and film production, web design, interactive design and fabrication, and photography.