Core

The Core Program can be summarized as a two-year course of study that educates, exposes, and builds a student’s technical, conceptual, and aesthetic skills. The courses emphasize building awareness, competence, and confidence through the studio experience. Expressive growth, new skills, and analytical development are all by-products of this experience. The Core Program should successfully build a solid backbone of knowledge for students to build on and strengthen as they move into their majors.

Core Level I (First year): Freshmen courses are designed to provide a skill-based, formal, and technical experience. Broad goals are given, while specific course material and project assignments are determined by the faculty teaching them. Courses are typically assignment-based; students must demonstrate a working knowledge of the specified principles for assignments to be considered successfully completed.

Core Level II (Second year): Courses are grouped around significant systems that organize visual experience. Students develop an understanding of these organizational concepts by investigating a range of processes, materials, and questions that will equip them as they progress toward major study.

Core Florence Program: The semester abroad in Florence, Italy takes place during the spring semester of Core Level II experience. Participating students spend the spring semester studying in the city that spawned the flowering of the Renaissance. The curricular structure is the same as Core Level II in St. Louis in that participating student take two studio courses, one Art elective, an Art History and an Italian Language class. The instructors for the studio courses are faculty from the St. Louis campus. All classes make use of the rich environment of Florence and the surrounding Tuscan countryside. At the beginning of the semester tours and slide lectures orient students to this magical city. All students will reap the most benefit from the semester in Italy because we require at least one semester of introductory Italian before students arrive in Florence.