Hello, everybody. Welcome. Thank you so much for joining us today. Today we are down here from the liberal arts department at Pennsylvania College of Art and Design and we are here with Michelle and Caitlin for both workers.
Faculty members, yes, worth.
What department, you know it is, but thank you so much for joining us today. If you do have any questions during the presentation, please feel free to put it in the chat area, which is on the bottom right corner of your screen. We will bring up any questions during the Q&A session of this session, but for now, go ahead, I'll take it away.
Thank you, Julia. Hi, everybody. My name is Michelle Fogel, and I've been with the liberal arts department at Pcad for over a well over a decade now. In the past year, I took a new role as chair and also, I don't know, we were a lot of hats around here. We were a lot of different hats, and the roll arts department and teach a real variety of things, so.
But that's me, currently. Liberal Arts department chair. Take it away. Hi, I'm Caitlin downs. I am the director of the writing center as well as the full time liberal arts faculty member. And I get to teach the fun stuff, which is creative writing, literature, and communications. Not as fun as my classes. I get everything else. Pretty much no, you guys came to the right place because even though this is an art school, liberal arts.
Meaning and shape and value and brings it to life. Art is not created in a vacuum and liberal arts gets to give you all of the the outside of artistic talent and skill. We get to give you all the rest of the building blocks, really how to live, how to live the rest of your life and.
Learn all the time so wanted to give you a bit of an introduction I think.
I don't know, maybe it's predominantly because of the politics of today, but whenever I tell people liberal arts, they automatically assume I am a an East Coast tree hugging hippie freak, to quote some of my family. And I'm not saying they're wrong, but that's not actually what liberal arts means. Different kind of liberal and liberal are different liberals. So this liberal actually.
Goes way, way, way back to Greek educators, philosophers and.
The old definition of it, I suppose, was of liberal, was liberales's freedom and the idea then, and I personally think now as well, the more you know about your world, the more you know about yourself in that world.
The freer you are as a thinker and as a participant in the outside world.
Go ahead, Caitlin. So, yeah, we have going on our first year, we shoot you right into the liberal arts out of the gate. You join us here at Pcad. And it's not just the art making, it's also the expanding of your mind. We like strong thinkers, strong makers and strong communicators. So we're largely working on that thinking and communicating in our liberal arts sections. In your first semester, you will take a foundations of verbal communications as well as art history.
And those first two classes will focus first of all on your oral and written communication skills in the case of foundations and verbal communications and your art history. We just revamped our art history and we're very excited about it. You start off with the history of art and visual culture, and it works as a bit of a survey of all of the majors. It kind of gives us a little bit of an artistry meets contemporary art track field so you can be introduced.
To what's happening now as well as what has happened in the past build into the majors that we offer here at peak at. So that's kind of an exciting. So you get foundations of verbal communications fall, get foundations of verbal communications too spring and then you also get a global art survey which is very exciting. We've kind of thrown the cannon out in a certain respect. It's no longer just Western versus non Western. Instead we are like, let's look at the world.
And what was going on everywhere and how it's contributed to our history. So it's not nearly as timeline oriented, it's the matic. And this is very exciting. A lot of other schools will start you at prehistory, and you will be looking at little things pulled out of caves 1st, and you go through a chronological timeline. And we have decided to eschew that and work to build your skills to more so recognize what's happening in the world today.
I am all for cave paintings. I don't know what to say.
Work. It's important, but I I it's I am completely convinced that what sets us apart, humans, humanity, is that we tell stories. And Kmart is an early way of actually tracking the fact that we have been telling stories throughout history. So you have your, you know, your ancestors to thank for telling each other not to eat the poisonous berries, and that's how they survived.
While others did not, each class here meets.
For your foundation year, those particular classes will meet twice a week for one hour and 25 minutes.
So it's 2 1/2 hours total for what we call 3 credit hours. So including some additional time for studying, etcetera, your three credit hours actually will look like 2 1/2 contact hours with your professor each week.
Courses throughout the remainder of your three years at Pcad and the course levels are pretty self-explanatory. The first year, most of the classes you take in year one will have a one in the front.
So we say A-100 level 200 level courses, you may have seen if you remember that global art is actually a 200 level course. So that one's preparing you for future second level or second year, our history learning. So that 200 level, those are intermediate usually building on the skills that you've been already given in the 100 level.
Not surprisingly, junior year is 300 level, much more advanced. Sometimes you will see a prerequisite of a particular 200 level course, which means that you need to take that class before you take this one. That's a prerequisite means. And last but not least, we have the 400 level. These are advanced, usually comprised mostly of seniors.
Sometimes juniors as well, and because we have the advantage of being a smaller school, we have fabulous seminar style courses here. When you get up to that 400 level to really live inside of, of a particular subject of whatever that particular course might be.
What are you actually doing in the liberal arts department? It's a question a lot of your time here, many of your credits are going to be liberal arts credits. So why are we doing this? Well, it's because it builds the whole student. This is where you learn your problem, solving your critical thinking. It's what makes you good communicators, because it's great to make the art. But then you need to make sure you engage the art with an audience. It helps you learn artistic and.
Visual traditions and see where you fit in with those traditions. And we just want you to explore. Figure out what you want. You know what best serves you as an artist. So you're going to take from all sorts of courses across the humanities. You'll have those art histories. You'll take some visual culture, a little bit of science and math, just as required. Don't worry, it's like 3 credits, speech, Social Sciences, which are very important to living in society.
English classes, your general humanities, which will also cover American studies, multidisciplinary studies, philosophy, religion. There are theater courses, there are performance based studies. There's music because music is necessary for like absolutely. Also a form of art. And of course my favorite stuff is the creative writing and literature. But you get it all and you get to sample from it to build toward your BFA degree. So this kind of like.
Rounds out your education and makes you a proper college graduate by the time you're done. Yeah, the the BFA or Bachelor of Fine Arts is.
Especially unique degree. You actually have 42 credits, which is 14 three credit hour courses in the liberal arts.
In order to graduate, you may have more, but you will have at least 42, and that's quite a bit. That gives you so much room to really explore and.
See if maybe there might be an area or two that interests you more than others we have.
Within that 42 credits a sample of the types of courses you might take in your four years, maybe 5 courses in art history and visual culture three and oral and written communication one in the social sciences. Which means that you take either psychology or sociology one course in the physical and life sciences or mathematics. That means you only have to take one of those classes.
Either a science, which would be physical science, or life science, or math and currently the hot math class. Believe it or not, there is one out. An art school is the business math and people love it. So people who thought they were terrible at math and never thought they would need it, much less have to do it again, discover that it's it's.
Something they can wrap their brains around, and it's actually incredibly helpful for the entrepreneurs who are in school here. Lastly, there are four courses that you get to pick as humanities electives. Humanities literally covers a the stuff that's left, the American studies and the multidisciplinary studies and performance studies, and you get to pick four of those in a combination that works for you.
So, Caitlin, what could we do if we decide, ah, man, I loved your creative writing class, and I really, really loved the poetry class. What could I do with that? Well, gosh, Michelle, we offer minors here at the college minors.
Liberal Arts Department actually will give you the chance to use those extra humanities electives to turn them into yet another credential that goes with your BF. A fantastic so you can get a minor in.
Literature, general humanities or art history, all from our department. Phenomenal. And what does that look like? Since you are the writing director, could you tell us a little bit about what kind of classes one could take for a creative writing minor? Well, the nice thing is our foundations of verbal communications classes built up toward a sophomore level 2 one class which is communicating through the arts.
And that automatically gets to count toward the creative writing minor. From there, you have a plethora of options in creative writing. There's, of course, the creative writing class, which is English 310, in which you kind of sampled broadly from all different kinds of forms. There's not fiction writing, which I love teaching. That one's really fun, because everyone thinks they know what nonfiction is until we start with what nonfiction isn't.
We've got poetry for the poets out there. We have the graphic novel for our students who love their comics. We've got constructing secondary worlds, which is very exciting for anyone who wants to do world building. And we have a lot of people who do want to be in like visual development or character development. And like a lot of developing is making sure you build your worlds properly and you put your characters into these worlds. So that is part of the offering and creative writing. We actually used world building.
Quite a bit. I taught heroes and villains not long ago over COVID, and that particular class is being a 400 level. It it it does involve quite a bit of reading and writing, but I had students at the end, Caitlin, that wrote no jokes, 75 page, beautiful books, short stories, which is a lot for a senior to fit into an elected. But we looked at, you know, what makes a hero, what makes a villain.
And in American culture, we are not at a loss for examples. And so that's speaks to you. That's the creative writing, writing minor, and that's for you, absolutely. We have the literature minor, little bit different. You do not have the same requirements here. Instead, we get into some of the literature courses, which I am lucky to also teach. I teach fantasy literature. I'm really excited in the spring I'm doing science fiction and horror literature. That one's always great. I love genre literature.
We have diverse voices in literature, meaning the underrepresented people in publishing get the chance to shine in this course. Children's literature, there is Bibard, Shakespeare, stage history, and of course some of these things also double dip. They worked for both the creative writing and the literature miners, so you can also take creative writing, poetry, the graphic novel, constructing secondary worlds, and they work toward the minor and the last one that fits in there too.
This mythology is essentially both the long history and storytelling element of literature. Definitely is.
In conjunction I I do also teach that Shakespeare class that was mentioned. Thank you Caitlin and.
Might probably. I don't know. I'll say it's my favorite. But if you ask me next week, I might say something different. But I really love teaching theater. And that of course includes Shakespeare, although I tend to.
To teach theater and the as well as Shakespeare and also play production for people who have maybe always wanted to but never tried being on stage. So we kind of have something for everyone, whatever level you might be coming in, whatever background you might bring with you. And those classes fit into what we call a general humanities minor. The theater courses, in addition, we have.
As it says here, 18 credits total, which is true for all of the minors, and.
A huge list of them. I'll tell you a few of our favorites in a minute and two of those six. This is the one caveat. Two of the six of of the credits that you need to take have to be 3 or 400 level. So just to make sure that you are progressing through and not staying only in the one or two hundred level.
Quick little note, just like some of the classes that counted for both.
The literature and creative writing minors. There are art history classes that could potentially fall into general humanities as well, so it's very careful.
Area. So I want to say this very clearly for everyone. Please read this. Art history courses don't count towards the regular Gen General Humanities minor, but additional art history classes can be taken toward the four humanities electives required to meet those 42 credits and liberal arts. So we have the two courses that are required for all graduates and the.
The first two, the foundation year courses and that long, beautiful list of of art history classes that we can talk about further in a minute, definitely have a unique place here. But the humanities?
Some of our favorite classes I don't know. This is my favorite kind of area, so I could probably go on. General Humanities covers American studies, English. It covers multidisciplinary studies, music, philosophy, religion, pretty much anything that's not the social sciences or art history or the math and requirements, but broadly most of what's covered by liberal arts. Yeah, is some really unique ones that we have to.
Just to mention, because it's kind of cool, we have a 1920s Paris, the Quay brothers, linguistics, and the list goes on and on. So pretty exciting classes in the humanities. And last but not least is the art history minor that I just mentioned. So again, that special note, the art history Courses 110 and 222 are required of all students to get their BFA.
So beyond that, what else can you do?
You can take four additional courses of your choice. Whatever is running at the time that feels right, take it. You want some cult cinema, yours to take that's under an art history listing, like you want to do the Renaissance? Good for you. That's another art history. So since you've already got two that are required, you can build off of those to get the rest of the minor. Yes, I just four more. And two of those need to be in the 300 to 400 level, but that's going to be true for any of your miners.
That's just kind of a natural progression, so don't let that scare you away. It is very possible here to get to minors along with your degree that people will graduate with a pretty full diploma at the end of their four years.
Thanks to these amazing meat miners that we have.
Yeah, it's really great. They round out some of the things that you learn in the FA. They complement a lot of what you're learning and they're great skills to take forward. You never know when you're going to be using your writing as well as your, you know, creating and the arts. So I know it open houses. It hasn't happened in the past few years to be honest, but prior to that I know a lot of.
Students would say, well, I don't really think I would need to write because I'm going to go into illustration and I'm just going to be.
Creating sequential art for a living I I don't really need the writing part.
No, you do. You need to be a strong communicator, and that's really what we're here to round out is to make sure that you can actually go out and sell your work and be in the presence of other people and make sure they understand the whole purpose of your work. Like, you've got to make art for the world. So we're preparing you for the world, yeah. We want you to represent well and to be able to fit into any community, any group and have some understanding of who you are as a person.
Thanks to the A well-rounded liberal arts education that you receive at pcad.
So now it let's break indoor song and dance portion of the.
Afternoon. Oh, currently we'll be doing that one later. OK. No song in dance. Sorry, Julia.
You are totally, totally fine. Thank you both for setting everything presentation.
Julia, it's OK if we don't do our tap dance routine this time, OK?
I mean, if you want to, you can.
But thank you both so much for all that great information. I know I enjoyed listening to the presentation. I can only imagine our students also enjoyed that as well. So it looks like we do have a question that has come in. The question is, what is your favorite part about being a part of this department?
No, I think I I think we need to be the surprise department. Like, everyone knows what to expect of their major because that's the thing they've geared themselves up for coming into BFA. We can try all different experimental things with students don't see coming. And like, even if they can read the title of the course and the course description what we do in the room, yeah, they're they're usually like, they're not ready because we have plans for them.
That connect to all of these wider themes that we're pulling in our courses. And yeah, it's just the exciting surprise part. Yeah, I was, I was going to say the same thing. I I'm so I love the variety. It's a variety pack. I I kind of never know what I'm going to teach next and and love every one of the classes.
I'm teaching it just As for instance, I have a new class I'm teaching this semester, which is, you know, always a little nerve wracking, but.
Fortunately, people signed up, so I actually have students in the class. I was afraid they might want to take it because it's a public speaking course and that, I don't know. I think that falls under the category of writing for some people, math for others, science for some of us, and it can be really terrifying, like Julia says, but public speaking can be awful if it is the number one.
Fear or phobia that human beings have. So I thought, what a better place than Pcad to offer a speech class because of what Caitlin said, though, like you need to communicate with the world, like you're going to be doing an art show. Imagine your your first few shows and you have to write artist statements that.
Allow the audience to really know who you are and trust that you know what you're talking about. And then hopefully they'll actually come over and talk to you. And you will get to engage with other people and getting as much practice as you can to talk to other people, not just in the job and that you know the job interview environment, but every day how do we communicate? But I get to do fun things like.
For doing for our speech assignments, we they just finished a podcast assignment and we're getting ready to do a.
A commercial, an infomercial actually of a product that they create and then we're going to do Ted talks, but they're not Ted talks because we're not Ted. We're peak at. I still haven't come up with catchy name yet, but our version of it so like.
It's again, it's not what you might expect from a speech class. It's the art school version of a speech class. And like that's again the liberal arts department gets to be this, like great bridge to, Oh yeah, the arts and and you get the rest of the arts that are just, they're making.
I love being with students that are primarily, just to be honest, primarily the students here are introverted and are visual thinkers. That's not that's just observation. That's reality and.
It's been such a cool thing for me as a teacher to kind of see where I fit into that and.
Where I can connect with introverts and extroverts and give them equal time in class and and have equal importance when they speak.
And then for visual think. Are you a visual thinker? I'm a little bit of both. Yeah. Yeah. I'm like both visual and, like, I'm. I'm think I'm more auditory. Yeah. Like I have to.
That's yes. Yes. OK. Yeah. I think I've got a little bit of both. Yeah, I'll play both fields. Yeah. OK. Wait, wait to go.
Yeah, it's it's it's fascinating journey to to be with such creative people all day long. So keeps us on our toes, yeah.
Awesome. Thank you. And I do have a personal question that I always like asking is what is one of the things that you have heard from students that kind of surprised you about your own department? So have they said, like, I know you were talking about a certain situation before we got online, Michelle, like similar things towards that?
What did I say? What was I saying?
Oh, I forget what I was saying right before me.
So, so an example of that I always, I actually heard one of our newest hires in emissions as a student worker. One thing that was really cool is that they were a foundation student and they were talking to me. I was asking like how are how are your classes going and all that stuff? And they were like, you know, I hated history in high school.
I'm really surprised. I love art history and it is like, it definitely took me by surprise. And I'm like, I hear that a lot with students. So, like, I always like hearing what you also hear from students that like maybe students coming in might not think about as it being like different.
Yeah, Julia is. Thank you for the reminder.
I am just kind of floored that we we found this amazing person to teach business math as an online course, which again, business math might normally make your blood run a little cold.
However, like it's skills for artists, like everything here is for artists, yeah. So it's very much so like applicable math, not like calculus that's beyond your comprehension. And it's like theory and and practice. And I have heard multiple people say just within the past year I.
Really like I had one student who had.
A year ago when he had to register for that math class.
Who shall remain nameless. But he was definitely upset. Like, I can't take math, I'm going to fail. And by the end of last semester, he said to me, it is my favorite class this whole semester and I just never, never thought I could do it so.
When the class connects with a student in our department, it connects out of a.
A level that is so distinctly different from.
The majors we don't have because we don't have people graduating with a degree in humanities or liberal arts.
It it kind of gives us a freedom, I think, to have relationships with students that are a little different. We're not.
Necessarily, like courting them for their futures and shaping their their futures in a way that has like a a career weight to it. So like what I teach you is going to have to put food on your table. We get to do all the other stuff around it and and look at well what she was that table. I wonder why. So what was that table cloth? What did that look like? That looks kind of like fabric from another country.
You wonder which one? And and we just get to know people at a very different level without that.
Pressure, the pressure, yeah, yeah. We get to be the exploratory ones. And I think the beauty of it being an art school is that we're kind of just big art kids.
We didn't end up here by accident, no. And and I know I'm disciplinary noncommittal, like I have the visual arts background as well as the humanities background. Like I wasn't willing to settle for just one. I want one of them all. So you find a lot of interesting professors here who have really diverse life experiences and educational experiences, and they're going to be bringing that into your classes. So everything's kind of cross disciplinary and everything kind of feeds.
Into what you're doing in your major, but in unexpected paths when you have no idea how business math turns into your professional practices class. And you hear the same things when you're like, Oh my God, that's how I can afford to live as an artist. Or, you know, you're taking a really cool science class, but you're also taking science fiction class, and then suddenly the theories that you know representative one are being crossed with reality and you're like, wow, this is the coolest thing. So it's really.
Existing these cross sections that are unexpected and this isn't high school, this is college and we get to be weirder and we get to embrace your nerdiness and just all kind of geek out on the same exciting ideas together. Definitely.
Couldn't agree more, well said.
Very well said. Well, thank you both. Those were the two questions that we had today. But I just want to say thank you both again so much for talking to our students. It definitely was a joy to watch you up and I'm so excited and I hope that the students get as excited as I am after watching you all. And honestly, I want to go back to college now and take more of the park classes, so that's great.
You're always. Yes, you are. Absolutely, absolutely. Julia was an awesome student.
But thank you both so much and thank you everybody who tuned in today to watch these two lovely people talk about their department or anybody who's watching in the future as well. If you do have any questions, please feel free to e-mail missions at peka.edu and we can definitely connect you with either of these two or answer any of your questions that you may have. But for now, I hope you have a wonderful day. Bye, everybody.