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AVT Infusing “Verbal Savvy” Into A Visual Program by Lynne M. Constantine, Art and Visual Technology Many people subscribe to the myth that artists, as visual thinkers and communicators, are not much involved with the written word. In today’s art world, however, artists and designers need verbal savvy to survive and succeed. Designers must understand and be fluent in writing to integrate word and image and to prepare proposals for prospective clients. Artists must have excellent writing skills to apply for grants, work as curators, and provide context for their own work. Indeed, writing has become an ever-larger part of artmaking itself. A growing number of artists create artists’ books, Internet art, and mixed media artworks, in which the written word is as integral to the work as paint or wood or paper. In academic year 2010-2011, the Department of Art and Visual Technology will begin to implement a writing-infused curriculum to meet the needs of these emerging artists and designers, along with the many art and design students who go on to make careers in fields other than art. The writing-infused curriculum will be part of an undergraduate curriculum overhaul inspired by our move to Academic V in Fall 2009. The most dramatic change will be moving the writing requirements beyond the department’s seminar and writing-intensive courses and into the studio courses, particularly in the foundations program. Although many faculty members already require writing as a part of studio coursework, infusing writing throughout the AVT curriculum will require a consensus as to the goals of writing in our curriculum, and how each class a student takes can participate in moving the student toward those goals. Although consensus guidelines were created in 2006 during a review of or writing-intensive course (AVT 395, Writing for Artists), they were applied only to that course. We plan to refine and extend those guidelines during the SACS assessment process. From there we can move to curriculum mapping, by which the department will work backward from its desired outcomes in student writing to ensure that these skills are taught effectively in our curriculum. The move toward a writing-infused curriculum will go hand-in-hand with another curricular innovation: the development of a “vertical core” that will replace our current foundations program. As currently designed, foundations includes a sequence of four courses, intended to be taken in the freshman and sophomore years, that teach the basics of drawing and of two-dimensional and three-dimensional design. We in AVT have long wanted to rethink this curriculum, particularly because two-thirds of our students are transfer students. Depending on the way that their transfer institution designed its foundations curriculum, they may have brought in courses that, while articulated in the transfer tables, nonetheless did not fully develop conceptual skills we consider crucial. Under the direction of AVT Associate Chair and foundations coordinator Peter Winant, the new program will span the four years and will divide foundations skills among focused units on such topics as color, materials and processes, and understanding of space and time. Through portfolio reviews and other diagnostics, each student’s foundations curriculum would be tailored to their needs in a dynamic way. Both writing and critical thinking skills will be mapped into all of the units of the vertical core. Another curricular innovation that will increase the centrality of writing in the AVT curriculum is a new course format, in which a seminar course will be linked with a studio course to allow students to fully explore both the intellectual basis and the studio practice associated with a topic. For example, a student might be enrolled simultaneously in a seminar course in environmental art and a studio course in which concerns for the environment are expressed in public artworks. In this format, writing would be an integral element both in building understanding to support artmaking, and in communicating about the art that is made. The biggest challenge in implementing the writing-infused curriculum will be the understandable concerns by AVT faculty about adding additional writing requirements to courses already packed with projects that build studio competences. However, with a carefully mapped curriculum that infuses writing throughout all coursework, the impact on each individual course will be small. In many cases, the number of written assignments will not change, though the assignments themselves and the types of evaluations they receive will evolve. As the curriculum redesign moves forward, AVT will consult with the WAC program and the Center for Teaching Excellence to assist AVT faculty in boosting their skills in making and evaluating writing assignments. ResourcesStudio Thinking as a Resource for Teaching Writing / 8 Studio Habits of Mind |