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Department ofArt and Art History

Stories

CIVA Update

This past academic year, through a generous grant from the Hearst Foundation, the Department of Art and Art History was once again able to implement three exciting initiatives. Collectively called the Community Initiatives for the Visual Arts (CIVA) programs, these initiatives have had great success forging relationships with the community, serving underrepresented students, offering faculty an opportunity to develop new and exciting courses, and providing our students with real world experience.

Summer Undergraduates Arts Internships

This past summer CIVA provided seven students with summer internship stipends. Undergraduate Studio Art and Art History majors and minors were placed at local non-profit arts organizations; some of the organizations participating were: The San Jose Museum of Art, The Triton Museum, MACLA (Movimiento de Arte y Cultura Latino Americana), the ICA (Institute of Contemporary Art) and the Montalvo Arts Center.  These learning opportunities offered our students an opportunity to gain real world experience. The CIVA internships helped them build their resumes and discern future career paths all while serving our community. 

Summer Arts and Writing Intensive

For the fourth year in a row the Art and Art History Department offered college level art and writing instruction to would-be first generation (students who would be the first in their families to attend college) high school students. This year the program saw several substantial changes. In addition to our partnership with Downtown College Prep we added Cristo Rey high school of San Jose. We also increased the number of students to 31, effectively doubling our number from the previous year. We also welcomed an SCU student intern to the team, who acted as a teaching assistant and coordinated the “Learn at Lunch” program, which covered such topics as: choosing a college, getting into college, and selecting a major. Lastly, we added new classes and faculty. The number of writing classes doubled and we added two sections of a digital printmaking class. At the end of the summer, over 100 students, relatives, parents, grandparents, and members of the SCU community gathered for an exhibition of the students art work.

 

 

Course Development

Photography Professor Takeshi Moro developed a new course titled, Storytelling in Digital Arts. The course will be offered in spring 2018 and it will explore how the human experience can be communicated effectively through the use of media, such as photography, video, and augmented reality. Stories will be created in collaboration with participants from a partnering Arrupe institution. For the foreseeable future, the community institution is Yu-Ai Kai, a Japanese American senior service center in San Jose. Students will engage weekly with seniors through the Arrupe and work together with the participants to tell their story through new media. Virtual Reality headsets will be utilized to enhance the viewer’s experience.

arthome, CIVA, Student story