The primary mission of the Art Education and Community Arts Practices (AECAP) Department is to develop leaders where the arts, education and community intersect. We cultivate arts practices where students and faculty collaborate within and beyond formal educational institutions. Embracing multiple abilities, backgrounds and urban communities, we shape arts-based democratic experiences to increase capacities for self-determination and civic justice.

BS in Art Education and BFA with Art Education Concentration Key Learning Outcomes

• Advocate for the arts and help families and communities to understand the importance of art education and creative processes to overall healthy human development. 
• Assess aptitudes, experiential backgrounds and interests of individuals and groups of students of varying needs and abilities and devise learning experiences to meet assessed needs.
• Develop meaningful and engaging art programming for children and youth informed by contemporary art practices.
• Understand the major styles and periods of art history, analytical methods and theories of criticism.
• Understand the development of past and contemporary art forms and contending philosophies of art. 
• Understand the fundamental and integral relationships between art history, contemporary art and contending philosophies of art to the making of art.
• Understand child development and psychological principles of learning as they relate to art education.
• Develop evaluative techniques and the ability to apply them in assessing both the progress of students and the objectives and procedures of the curriculum.
• Organize continuing study and incorporate knowledge gained into self-evaluation and professional growth.
• Acquire and develop basic expressive, technical, procedural and organizational skills and conceptual insights through studio art and design experiences.
• Understand traditional processes as well as newer technological developments in fine arts and design fields.

MEd Key Learning Outcomes

• Apply current, additional and deeper knowledge, skills and technologies that comprise the content of a visual arts education program with inquiry-based curriculum appropriate to their own teaching venues.
• Gain further knowledge of art history and the history of education, its major issues, trends and contributions.
• Be able to apply new knowledge of history of art and education to current practices. 
• Implement goals and inquiry-based curriculum and assessment, methodologies and pedagogies for their own teaching venues.
• Collect and analyze data pertaining to implementation of new approaches to assessment, methodologies and pedagogies.
• Reflect on outcomes and evaluate the impact of new approaches to assessment, methodologies and pedagogies.
• Comprehend research vocabulary and methodologies; analyze, interpret and reflect upon research paradigms used in the field. 
• Choose selected examples of methodologies and apply them to their own research foci and educational venue.
• Increase expertise in selected art education topics and develop a higher level of leadership commitment to art education professionalism.
• Explore and develop a deeper understanding of interconnections between self and work as an artist/educator/researcher. 
• Apply new knowledge through art practice, oral presentations and written papers.
• Develop a scholarly masters paper based on research that is timely and pertinent to the field and extends its substantive knowledge base.
• Reflect on research outcomes and report on them in oral presentations through written documents and/or research creation.