The First Year Experience offers an engaging variety of 8 week thematic workshop-structured art courses, designed as an experiential initiation into professional artistic practice, creative methodology, and studio work ethic. Here, you will engage not only in the making of art but also in a critical dialog that explores how your art communicates what it communicates—as well as strategies to sharpen this connection between the art object and its meaning. 

The faculty work closely with you from the generation of the idea through the realization of the object.  Integrated projects and processes, rather than isolated design exercises, encourage personal investment.  The focus of the program is to foster inventive and resourceful students, who can express complicated ideas in a manner that is both technically and conceptually sophisticated.  While situated in this supportive community, you will develop critical thinking and communication skills through engaging group critiques, individual critiques, and written components.  The First Year Experience challenges, inspires, and empowers students with the basic artistic sovereignty required to pursue an art degree.

First Year Experience Thematic Workshop Modules

*Asterisk indicates requirement for all BFA & BA studio and AVCE majors

First Year Experience Requirements

Beyond the three required themes, Mapping, Space, and Surface, you will custom-build your own experience with three additional workshops to fulfill First Year Experience requirements. The half-semester workshop courses break up the semester into smaller, more focused and digestible packages—helping you to feather your professional art practice, while also promising more variety of practice and instruction. The sixteen-week semester is divided evenly into two eight-week Phases: Phase 1 and Phase 2.

For a description of these courses, please review the University of Arizona General Catalog.

First Year Experience courses are required for:

• BA Studio majors
• BFA Studio majors
• BFA Art and Visual Culture Education majors

You can view a photo slideshow of students at work in First Year Experience courses and listen to a description by Professor Gary Setzer: http://uanews.org/node/37872

If you would like to learn more about this program and its options or have questions not answered in these pages, please contact a Foundations division faculty member:

Gary Setzer