What is the art student to faculty ratio?
The art department serves nearly 100 art majors. With 7 full time faculty members we maintain a student to faculty ratio of 15 to 1. As a result, we are able to provide studio classes that do not exceed 15 seats. Higher level courses are even smaller. These limited enrollment numbers allow our faculty to provide personalized instruction and focused attention to each student.
What art-specific study abroad programs are offered?
We strongly encourage our students to get off campus and experience art and life in other environments. Whether that involves regular trips to the city for gallery opening and museum visits, or more formal semester study abroad programs, or mission trips, the time away seeing and experiencing enhances education and artistic abilities.
Some of the more formal off-campus study opportunities our students often engage include Gordon in Orvieto, Urban Studies, HNGR, as well as the possibility of taking supplemental classes at local area institutions.
What does career exploration for art students look like?
The art department is strongly committed to Wheaton's liberal arts curriculum that emphasizes a synthesis of learning. Art provides an introduction to many ways of knowing, problem solving, and doing. These skills find application in a variety of work settings. By its nature art is also informative about all of life. A liberally educated artist is a desirable employee.
Our students have gone on to do many wonderful things. They find employment in a wide variety of art related fields, are accepted into graduate schools around the country, become professional artists and art historians, and also apply their artistic sensibilities in non-art entrepreneurial and service oriented vocations.
What is the goal of the Sophomore and Junior Critiques?
The Sophomore Portfolio and Junior critiques provide guidance and a progress report on our students artistic development. The critiques offer each student individual feedback from multiple faculty members. These key movements of review ensure that students are progressing appropriately in their education as artists.
Sophomore Portfolios require students to put together a digital collection of their work along with a written personal art statement. This portfolio is reviewed by the faculty, who provide comment on the work. Through formative critical response that addresses imagery, concept, and overall presentation of the work students gain artistic confidence and a sense of direction.
Junior Critiques are formal presentations of a more cohesive body of a student's artwork. The student presents the work's progression to a group of faculty members and explains the artistic resources she or he draws upon and the direction in which she or he feels headed. The Critique serves to cultivate the concepts, imagery, and materials that the student will develop in her or his Senior Exhibition.
Are Portfolios Required for Prospective Art Majors?
There is no portfolio submission requirement for being an Art Major at Wheaton College.
For more information about applying to Wheaton College and how to submit your portfolio, contact the Undergraduate Admissions team.