2019-2020 Graduate and Professional Studies Catalog 
    
    Mar 28, 2024  
2019-2020 Graduate and Professional Studies Catalog [ARCHIVED CATALOG]

Institute of Art and Design Programs and Courses


Programs and courses listed here are only offered on the Manchester Campus.

Institute of Art and Design

Programs

Master of Arts

Master of Fine Arts

Art Education

(No Active Programs)

Courses

Photography

Program Description


The low-residency MFA in Visual Arts and the low-residency MFA in Photography at the Institute of Art at New England College both provide a comprehensive focus for graduate candidates who are seeking to combine creative work, inquiry, and investigation in ways that focus on the advanced preparation for a profession in the arts.

Five ten-day residencies and semesters of supported independent work define the program over a two-year period; students are taught and advised by highly qualified faculty and in direct mentorship relationships each semester with individual professional artists. Students work with faculty and mentors to create individual plans of study that accompany organized and linear history, theory, and criticism, seminars, lectures and discussions. Study during the residency periods includes the student’s active participation in seminars and tutorials, formal and informal contact with faculty, consultation with the student’s faculty advisor about the development of content, concept, and creation of their body of work, over the period of study and beyond. Study during non-residency time focuses on student’s independent creation, reading and writing, regular structured formal contact with the artist mentor, and formal and informal feedback from the student’s faculty advisor. The low-residency MFA in Visual Arts and the low-residency MFA in Photography are degrees that are designed to advance the career of artists and teachers, as well as professionals in other art-related fields.

During the residency:

  • Students present, in select studio groups, all work created during the semester.
  • Students are required to participate in formal History, Theory and Criticism seminars, lectures and discussions that develop and expand the students knowledge about Art and Culture as well as their understanding of their own work and the place it fits in the contemporary art world. Over the course of the 5 residencies faculty present lectures and syllabi on history, professional practices, and theories, related to arts that advance the students understanding of the development of concepts in art from the past to the present. Students write reviews and criticism of the ideas presented as well as on their own ideas and work, these writings culminate in an extensive thesis paper which not only proves their comprehension of Theory and History but also places their work within the contexts of art.
  • Students are required to participate in small group and individual critiques with faculty and visiting artists. These critiques are an opportunity for students to engage in dialogue, share concepts, review accomplishments and make plans for further development of work and concepts in coming semester and beyond graduate school.
  • Each residency, visiting artists will lecture of a variety of topics including their own work, professional practices, and theory. Students are required to attend all lectures in a given residency. Students have the opportunity to sign up for individual critiques with visiting artists.
  • With faculty assistance students choose an approved artist mentor for the coming semester. Each semester the student must choose a different artist mentor.
  • Each residency, in concert with their faculty advisor and with the oversight of the Director of the Graduate Program, students make a detailed and comprehensive plan for the coming semester. This plan is the basis for reading, writing and creative, work goals and guides student - mentor discussion during the semester.

During the semester:

  • Students meet with their chosen artist mentor for critique at least 3 times during a residency and are in written or verbal contact with them each month.
  • Students will write a summary of the residency they have just attended.
  • In discussion with their faculty advisor and artist mentor students create and complete an individual reading list which supports their creative work.
  • Students are given reading assignments to complete which prepare them for and complement the History, Theory and Criticism seminars, lectures and discussions.
  • During the semester students write 4 semi-formal papers that they submit to their faculty advisor. The topic of these papers is guided by advisor suggestions, which are based on reading, theory and creative work goals, stated during the residency. These papers are intended to connect critical theory and history lessons during the residency with students work and lead to structuring the final thesis.
  • Students are in written and/or verbal contact with their faculty advisor throughout the semester. During these contact hours students and faculty discuss; goals successfully completed; challenges faced; written work; and review the mentor relationship.
  • Students complete a stated amount of work during the residency. Students are expected to devote 25 hours a week to their work. When they return to the next residency students present all work done during the semester.
  • Students will write an artist statement and biography that they will bring with them to the next residency.
  • Students will write a semester summary highlighting their achievements as well as detailing challenges and experiences over the semester.
  • After discussion with the Associate Dean of Graduate Studies and the Department Chair or the student’s Director of Program, students may use existing facilities and resources at the Institute of Art at New England College’s Manchester Campus (such as, but not limited to, the library’s special collections, wood fire kiln, digital labs or other resources). An additional fee for facilities use and resources will be determined.

Learning Outcomes


At the conclusion of a graduate degree program at the Institute of Art at New England College, students will:

Content Knowledge and Application

  • Apply technical skills as appropriate to a student’s medium, subject, and conceptual concerns. To this end, demonstrate committed, disciplined studio practice and full engagement in the intentional formal presentation of one’s creative work, as relevant to the discipline.
  • Demonstrate an ability to actively and fully engage in individual and group discussions, including thoughtful participation, intentional listening, and receptiveness to constructive dialog and critique.
  • Engage in risk taking and invention in one’s creative and academic  work. Risk-taking and invention should also be evident in research, writing, and through  full and rigorous engagement in the curriculum. Risk taking implies comfort with a range of ideas and perspectives, as well as with contradiction and ambiguity.
  • Demonstrate an understanding of one’s work relative to historical and contemporary practice and demonstrate an awareness that creative work exists in a social context.
  • Develop an inventive, individualized, flexible, and entrepreneurial plan for maintaining a sustained practice.

Collaboration and Participation

  • Participate in cross-disciplinary collaborative work, engaging fully with structured programming as well as with alternative sites and communities, engaging with concepts and entities outside of the immediate artistic and academic bubbles of one’s discipline.
  • Demonstrate an awareness of the artist’s role as one of local and global citizen. Social and global awareness includes an understanding that power structures operate through all forms of communication–in the creation of meaning and therefore in the making and interpretation of works.

Communication and Articulation

  • Demonstrate an aptitude for the communication of ideas through multiple modes of expression and the intentional consideration of audience. Aptitude  includes formal skill as well as an an articulation of one’s own ideas and creative work as subjective. Communication will demonstrate an ongoing awareness of and consideration for social and cultural contexts.
  • Actively consider and respond to issues around appropriation, influence, and source material through one’s creative and professional practice. In all academic and creative work, all appropriated words, images, and ideas of others will be fully and clearly identified.

Critical and Creative Thinking

  • Engage in critical and creative thinking by demonstrating an ability to assess ideas, research, theories, and/or creative works presented by diverse thinkers and makers, synthesize multiple perspectives into a coherent understanding of a problem, issue, or question, and generate alternative responses, as demonstrated in the coherent presentation of a question, interpretation, or approach in multiple modes or forms.
  • Demonstrate expanded formal and conceptual exploration, applying those connections to one’s own practice by drawing inspiration and/or differentiation from a wide range of formal strategies and ways of constructing meaning. 

Ethical and Social Responsibility

  • Reflect on behavior with an awareness of one’s ethical and social responsibility. This includes active, thoughtful participation in community and advocacy for one’s own health and wellness and that of others.  Students will demonstrate self-reliance, empathy, and social literacy in their personal, academic, and professional interactions.
  • Utilize ethical scholarly practice in creative and academic work.

(No Active Programs)

Courses

Visual Arts

Program Description


The low-residency MFA in Visual Arts and the low-residency MFA in Photography at the Institute of Art at New England College both provide a comprehensive focus for graduate candidates who are seeking to combine creative work, inquiry, and investigation in ways that focus on the advanced preparation for a profession in the arts.

Five ten-day residencies and semesters of supported independent work define the program over a two-year period; students are taught and advised by highly qualified faculty and in direct mentorship relationships each semester with individual professional artists. Students work with faculty and mentors to create individual plans of study that accompany organized and linear history, theory, and criticism, seminars, lectures and discussions. Study during the residency periods includes the student’s active participation in seminars and tutorials, formal and informal contact with faculty, consultation with the student’s faculty advisor about the development of content, concept, and creation of their body of work, over the period of study and beyond. Study during non-residency time focuses on student’s independent creation, reading and writing, regular structured formal contact with the artist mentor, and formal and informal feedback from the student’s faculty advisor. The low-residency MFA in Visual Arts and the low-residency MFA in Photography are degrees that are designed to advance the career of artists and teachers, as well as professionals in other art-related fields.

During the residency:

  • Students present, in select studio groups, all work created during the semester.
  • Students are required to participate in formal History, Theory and Criticism seminars, lectures and discussions that develop and expand the students knowledge about Art and Culture as well as their understanding of their own work and the place it fits in the contemporary art world. Over the course of the 5 residencies faculty present lectures and syllabi on history, professional practices, and theories, related to arts that advance the students understanding of the development of concepts in art from the past to the present. Students write reviews and criticism of the ideas presented as well as on their own ideas and work, these writings culminate in an extensive thesis paper which not only proves their comprehension of Theory and History but also places their work within the contexts of art.
  • Students are required to participate in small group and individual critiques with faculty and visiting artists. These critiques are an opportunity for students to engage in dialogue, share concepts, review accomplishments and make plans for further development of work and concepts in coming semester and beyond graduate school.
  • Each residency, visiting artists will lecture of a variety of topics including their own work, professional practices, and theory. Students are required to attend all lectures in a given residency. Students have the opportunity to sign up for individual critiques with visiting artists.
  • With faculty assistance students choose an approved artist mentor for the coming semester. Each semester the student must choose a different artist mentor.
  • Each residency, in concert with their faculty advisor and with the oversight of the Director of the Graduate Program, students make a detailed and comprehensive plan for the coming semester. This plan is the basis for reading, writing and creative, work goals and guides student - mentor discussion during the semester.

During the semester:

  • Students meet with their chosen artist mentor for critique at least 3 times during a residency and are in written or verbal contact with them each month.
  • Students will write a summary of the residency they have just attended.
  • In discussion with their faculty advisor and artist mentor students create and complete an individual reading list which supports their creative work.
  • Students are given reading assignments to complete which prepare them for and complement the History, Theory and Criticism seminars, lectures and discussions.
  • During the semester students write 4 semi-formal papers that they submit to their faculty advisor. The topic of these papers is guided by advisor suggestions, which are based on reading, theory and creative work goals, stated during the residency. These papers are intended to connect critical theory and history lessons during the residency with students work and lead to structuring the final thesis.
  • Students are in written and/or verbal contact with their faculty advisor throughout the semester. During these contact hours students and faculty discuss; goals successfully completed; challenges faced; written work; and review the mentor relationship.
  • Students complete a stated amount of work during the residency. Students are expected to devote 25 hours a week to their work. When they return to the next residency students present all work done during the semester.
  • Students will write an artist statement and biography that they will bring with them to the next residency.
  • Students will write a semester summary highlighting their achievements as well as detailing challenges and experiences over the semester.
  • After discussion with the Associate Dean of Graduate Studies and the Department Chair or the student’s Director of Program, students may use existing facilities and resources at the Institute of Art at New England College Manchester Campus (such as, but not limited to, the library’s special collections, wood fire kiln, digital labs or other resources). An additional fee for facilities use and resources will be determined.

Learning Outcomes


At the conclusion of a graduate degree program at the Institute of Art at New England College, students will:

Content Knowledge and Application

  • Apply technical skills as appropriate to a student’s medium, subject, and conceptual concerns. To this end, demonstrate committed, disciplined studio practice and full engagement in the intentional formal presentation of one’s creative work, as relevant to the discipline.
  • Demonstrate an ability to actively and fully engage in individual and group discussions, including thoughtful participation, intentional listening, and receptiveness to constructive dialog and critique.
  • Engage in risk taking and invention in one’s creative and academic  work. Risk-taking and invention should also be evident in research, writing, and through  full and rigorous engagement in the curriculum. Risk taking implies comfort with a range of ideas and perspectives, as well as with contradiction and ambiguity.
  • Demonstrate an understanding of one’s work relative to historical and contemporary practice and demonstrate an awareness that creative work exists in a social context.
  • Develop an inventive, individualized, flexible, and entrepreneurial plan for maintaining a sustained practice.

Collaboration and Participation

  • Participate in cross-disciplinary collaborative work, engaging fully with structured programming as well as with alternative sites and communities, engaging with concepts and entities outside of the immediate artistic and academic bubbles of one’s discipline.
  • Demonstrate an awareness of the artist’s role as one of local and global citizen. Social and global awareness includes an understanding that power structures operate through all forms of communication–in the creation of meaning and therefore in the making and interpretation of works.

Communication and Articulation

  • Demonstrate an aptitude for the communication of ideas through multiple modes of expression and the intentional consideration of audience. Aptitude  includes formal skill as well as an an articulation of one’s own ideas and creative work as subjective. Communication will demonstrate an ongoing awareness of and consideration for social and cultural contexts.
  • Actively consider and respond to issues around appropriation, influence, and source material through one’s creative and professional practice. In all academic and creative work, all appropriated words, images, and ideas of others will be fully and clearly identified.

Critical and Creative Thinking

  • Engage in critical and creative thinking by demonstrating an ability to assess ideas, research, theories, and/or creative works presented by diverse thinkers and makers, synthesize multiple perspectives into a coherent understanding of a problem, issue, or question, and generate alternative responses, as demonstrated in the coherent presentation of a question, interpretation, or approach in multiple modes or forms.
  • Demonstrate expanded formal and conceptual exploration, applying those connections to one’s own practice by drawing inspiration and/or differentiation from a wide range of formal strategies and ways of constructing meaning. 

Ethical and Social Responsibilty

  • Reflect on behavior with an awareness of one’s ethical and social responsibility. This includes active, thoughtful participation in community and advocacy for one’s own health and wellness and that of others.  Students will demonstrate self-reliance, empathy, and social literacy in their personal, academic, and professional interactions.
  • Utilize ethical scholarly practice in creative and academic work.

(No Active Programs)

Courses

Writing

(No Active Programs)

Courses

Writing for Stage and Screen

(No Active Programs)

Courses