First Year Foundation Students

First Year Foundations Students

Foundations is a year-long sequence of courses taken in your first year in the Department of Art and is required for all incoming students seeking one of the bfa studio concentrations (Graphic Design, Painting & Drawing, Photography & Media Art, and Sculpture) or ba degrees (Art Education, Art History, and Studio). The faculty in the Department of Art have designed this sequence of courses with students’ success in mind. Students are provided with hands-on experience in several materials, methods of creative practices, and processes that are traditional and experimental. Students will develop essential skills of analyzing, writing, and speaking about art and visual media; develop an understanding of the various disciplines; and begin to build personal research and idea generation techniques. Most importantly, Foundations provides a supportive environment for developing responsible and rigorous working habits required for success at utc and creative professional fields alike.

For a general overview of the department and what to expect your first year, you can watch this video produced especially for you.

Required Art Supplies

Students enrolled in Foundations art classes are required to purchase kits for their classes. If you are starting in the fall (taking art 1010 and/or art 1050), we recommend ordering them from the utc Bookstore during the summer and picking them up at the beginning of the semester upon arrival to campus. If you are starting in the spring, be in touch with Katie Hargrave to get a list of supplies for art 1020 and art 1060. It is expected you have these materials on the first day of class, so order them now!

Computers

We encourage you to consider purchasing your own computer if you do not already have one. It will make completing your coursework significantly easier. We offer a few things to consider below.

While Apple (aka “Mac”) computers are expensive, they are the industry standard in art and design fields. The best computer to use all the software standard in our various fields is a MacBook Pro. We do not recommend Macbook Air (it does not have enough memory and processing power to run some programs efficiently); however, if you already own one you will still be able to use it in classes during your foundations year. Note that Apple offers student discounts. If you prefer a pc, Adobe recommends the Dell xps 15" model. In all instances, consider trying to get as much ram as your budget allows. Our Library Studio recommends 16g of ram for a computer to serve you well throughout your career at utc.

Questions?

If you have specific questions about the Foundations classes (art 1000, art 1010, art 1050, art 1020, and art 1060) that are not answered here, please reach out to the Foundations faculty, Katie Hargrave and Heath Schultz.