Undergraduate Programs

The Department of Visual and Media Arts educates students to become informed, ethical, creative, and aesthetically disciplined scholars and practitioners. Furthermore, the department’s faculty encourages broad-based learning and is dedicated to including the perspectives of many cultures and nations.

Students are encouraged to understand the social, political and cultural implications of the visual, media and sound arts, so that they develop an appreciation of the principles that lead to reasoned and humane outcomes. Students are exposed to a balance of theory and practice, while learning to present concepts and tell stories.

The faculty of the Department of Visual and Media Arts is committed to the following goals:

• To provide a core curriculum that exposes all students to the history, theory and practice of the visual, media and sound arts.
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• To provide students with the opportunity to develop skills in writing and production, aesthetic and technical proficiency, and their individual creative voices.
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• To emphasize scholarship in the arts and how it may inform students’ artistic choices, intellectual development, and career goals.
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• To encourage students to view their major course of study in the context of other fields by advising them to take relevant courses in the arts and humanities, social sciences, theater, communication studies, business, writing, and the sciences.
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• To utilize new tools and technologies to augment traditional methods of scholarship.
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• To encourage a critical understanding of and sensitivity toward the global contexts within which the visual, media and sound arts function.

Programs

The Department of Visual and Media Arts offers a curriculum designed to help students achieve the goals described above as well as to focus on preparing for careers in the visual media and sound arts, and/or graduate studies. The Department offers two tracks within its Bachelor of Arts (B.A.) curriculum: Visual and Media Arts Production and Visual and Media Studies, as well as a Bachelor of Fine Arts (B.F.A.) degree in Visual and Media Arts Production.