Integrated Studio Arts

Overview

A panel of advisors guides students as they choose classes that are most appropriate for their personal vision. Active artist-faculty across all Art + Design concentrations offer individualized instruction emphasizing the development of each student’s visual voice.

You will be able to mix-and-match studio courses from our other programs to build your own path of study:

• animation & game arts
• ceramics
• drawing
• graphic design
• illustration
• jewelry/metals
• painting
• photography
• printmaking
• sculpture

• textiles

You'll develop cross-disciplinary sensitivity—with the possibility of combining painting with printmaking, photography, digital media, textiles, and other disciplines in contemporary art making. You'll also be able to explore fields across the university, such as business, engineering, and science.

The BFA is a professional degree with concentrated areas of specialization, so you will take more art courses than you would in a BA program. At Integrated Studio Arts from University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, you also have the advantages of a university education where you can diversify your studies and expand your career opportunities.

Program Outcomes

The program outcomes listed below are learned and evaluated through course-based learning objectives and assignments that are available in the syllabus of each course. Upon successful completion of the degree requirements in Art + Design, students will be able to:

• Identify and apply the elements and principles of visual design when visually communicating information and ideas;

• Apply knowledge of historical narratives, contemporary issues, and processes and directions of their fields, to produce interpretations and/or artifacts;

• Describe the history of their field, theoretical framework of their field, and contemporary work being done in their field;

• Develop and produce relevant projects using various media and technologies — both traditional and contemporary — appropriate to their field;

• Perform a useful critical analysis of communication, form, and concept;

• Create work with an appropriate relationship between form, content, and context when visually communicating information and/or ideas;

• Solve formal, conceptual, and communication problems through the process of self-directed trial, error, and refinement;

• Demonstrate perceptual acuity (perceptual “sharpness,” to see/understand things in a way others do not), conceptual and contextual understanding, and technical facility at a professional entry level in their chosen fields;

• Solve visual/aural, conceptual, and technical problems through independently- and collaboratively- generated analysis, evaluation, and refinement;

• Assess and present their research, process, and outcome in an articulate manner;

• Present themselves in a professional manner appropriate to their field of study.