BA: 4 years: Art (Studio Practice : Art Education Emphasis
BFA: 4.5 years : Art (Animation/Illustration, Digital Media Art, Photography,
Pictorial Art, Spatial Art with Art Education pre-certification courses)

The undergraduate art education emphases which prepare students for entry into Single Subject Matter Preparation Programs is only one of five programs in Art Education at San Jose State. These five programs provide a comprehensive effort to serve the region with arts education services: the art education emphasis of the studio art major prepares students to become specialist teachers of art, K-12; three undergraduate courses in art education help prepare generalist teachers, K-6; a master's degree program offers advanced study in art education to practicing teachers and arts administrators; ARTPATH, an artist-in-schools program provides upper division and graduate students with in-school experiences, working either alongside a seasoned artist and/or in partnership with a practicing teacher; and BayCAP, one of the ten sites of the California Arts Project which is responsible for the professional development in arts education in the eleven counties of the San Francisco Bay Area.

Although each of the five programs has it's own special direction all five are committed to a common underlying philosophy that:

The arts are a unique way of knowing and making meaning.
The arts provide connections to all cultures.
Teachers of the arts must actively engage in the arts and creative processes.

The Credential Program in Art Education at San Jose State University is a "fifth-year" program; students who earn a Bachelor of Arts degree in Art in four years or a Bachelor of Fine Arts in four and a half years follow their graduation with a fifth year of thirty semester units of professional education course work in a graduate level credential program. Students planning to enter the fifth year program to become credentialled teachers must meet the requirements for a BA or BFA Degree in Studio Art. As they work on that degree, an Art Education Advisor helps them follow the Art Education emphasis within the BA or BFA. This emphasis meets the content standards for a Single Subject Teaching Credential developed by the Commission for Teacher Credentialing of the State of California (CTC).

Competence in basic studio skills is emphasized, with attention to a distribution of coursework in specific studio areas that are commonly taught in California schools. Attention to competencies in professional education, including directed observation, is offered primarily in the graduate fifth year program, although students are required to take a basic three unit course, Studio Experiences for Young People (Art 138) as part of the undergraduate program. They may also take a second course in multicultural arts for children as an elective.

General standards having to do with students' abilities to "relate their understandings of artistic styles and principles to major visual art media and to the related fields of music, dance, and attitudes relating to human, personal considerations, and to social, economic, and cultural components that give individual communities their identity," are dealt with across the BA program. In meeting CTC standards as undergraduates, students are engaged in learning in the fields of art history, art criticism, aesthetics and art production.

Cooperating schools have been found throughout the Santa Clara Valley and in Santa Cruz. The schools range from Lincoln High School, a magnet school of the arts to Silver Creek High School, a school serving a wide diversity of students, many with limited English skills. Students are able to select the kind of school they want for their student teaching. Supervising teachers are selected from those known to School of Art and Design faculty through the activities of professional organizations and the California Arts Project. In recent years, between ten and sixteen beginning teachers have earned their credentials through the program.

The program invites students to participate in the arts as art makers who, over time, develop and deepen their levels of interest, skill and personal satisfaction. The program is studio based. During the first two to three years of study, 30 semester units of required in core studio courses that address basic concepts and skills in art making. In these courses, students are encouraged to employ multiple ways of thinking in a variety of modes of production, using a range of materials. They are introduced to the use of formal and expressive qualities in personal expression. For example, in Beginning Drawing (Art 24), students encounter the elements and principles of drawing in studio practice which emphasizes line, shape, and light-dark used in visual art and design. In Introduction to Ceramics (Art 46) students are engaged in a survey of methods used by contemporary artists presented in relationship to those artists' philosophies of art.

Following their completion of core courses, students select specific areas of study as they increase their breadth and perspective through an additional 12 units of studio work. Students select from both two-dimensional and three-dimensional areas two sequences of courses that either follow their developing interest or branch out into new areas of study. For example, a student who became interested in Fiber Concepts (Art 42) as a lower division student might select Fiber Sculpture (Art 143) and Textile Design (Art 144). Another student might choose to sample from printmaking techniques in Serigraphy and Intaglio (Art 151 and Art 153). Those interested in graphics can choose to develop that interest with two courses in Graphic Design, and so forth.

A portfolio review and interview are held during the senior year in which art education students present representative art works to a committee made up of art education faculty, studio faculty and local accomplished teachers of art. At this time they are expected to be able to discuss their work as it represents their development of art making skills, as well as it's place in a historical and cultural context. Students should be able to expound on its relation to their own learning in the four areas that are represented by the four components of the Visual and Performing Arts Framework of the State of California. The program requires that all students develop the ability to make use of the writings of art critics, and the ability to practice art criticism in written and oral responses to their own works and to art works from diverse cultures.

Additionally, the program requires each student to acquire knowledge about relationships between art and the development of children and adolescents. Within General Education requirements are a number of courses which deal with human development. Students are required to take at least one course in Human Understanding and Development and one in Self and Society. In each of these areas, development is addressed. The specifics of development in art as well as the role of art in development (two different topics) are developed in Art 138 and 139, ARED 150 and 338. Readings, demonstrations, discussions and written reviews address the relationships between development and the arts. The program introduces each student to the history and theories of art education, fosters eclectic perspectives regarding art education philosophies and purposes, and emphasizes the importance of the cultural backgrounds and developmental levels of art learners.

There is an ever-increasing need for teachers in California. In the past few years, the Art Education has helped between 10 and 15 students a year prepare to become teachers. Their presence in the field was evidenced recently in their participation in a show of high school art, Fresh Air, held in the School of Art and Design. Currently, 15 teachers are enrolled in the fifth-year program in the School of Education. The strengths of the program lie in our multiple avenues of influence from the university into the local schools. Because we have so many ways of providing arts education services to schools, students in our undergraduate programs have many ways to participate in art education before and after they have made a decision to become teachers. Most would agree that the program meets institution-wide aspirations for excellence.

To learn more about these different programs click on any of the following: Undergraduate programs leading to elementary school credentials Undergraduate and graduate programs leading to secondary school credentials Graduate programs BayCap: professional development for arts teachers Artpath: artist-in-schools program Creative Arts program

For information regarding degree requirements and program procedures, contact:

Gladys Crowell
Fine Art Office, ART 123
School of Art and Design
San Jose State University
One Washington Square
San Jose, CA 95192-0089
Phone: (408) 924 -4340
Fax: (408) 924-4326
Email:gecrowell@email.sjsu.edu

Faculty/Advisor:
Pamela Sharp El Shayeb, Art Education Coordinator
Adjunct Faculty:
Donna Thompson

For complete information on art and design program requirements, see the College of Humanities and the Arts, School of Art and Design in the San Jose State University catalog.