0 0 0 0 EMMA NOLAN-ABRAHAM IAN/ Daily Art and Design junior Megumi Nishimura makes plastic body molds for the class Conspicuous Consumption: Food as Art Material in the woodworking studio. Making a change Students, administration adjust to new Art and Design School curriculum. By A exandra Jones / Daily ArtsEditor ART SCHOOL Continued from page 5B not giving them any practical skills whatsoever to go out and survive and make a life." "In the end, I feel like I came out okay, but only because I fought, like, the entire time," she explained. "Everything I had to do was a fight; it was a battle. However, you can make it work." The new constitution The transition from one curricu- lum to the other may not have gone as smoothly as it should have. But now that a few of the kinks have been worked out, how do new-cur- riculum students feel about the pro- gram? LSA and Art and Design junior Mollie Bates has a unique perspec- tive on the change. As a leader of the University's chapter of the American Institute of Graphic Arts, Bates has had to deal with student concerns about the curriculum. But she has found a way to make it work for her and provided resources to help other students. "It's almost to the point with me and others where it's like, 'The tran- sition has been made, things are ok,' " she said. While she agrees that "the seniors got a little screwed and the fifth-years definitely did," Bates is realistic about the switch. "The major changes that (groups like ASL and SAS) were proposing to the cur- riculum were not feasible. And the deans ... have a purpose." While Bates believes that the administration has done a lot for students, such as creating the senior studios in which to work on their IPs, she emphasized that personal responsibility is what makes good students in the new curriculum. "You go to art school to learn how to conceptualize, think big, be a leader and have these awesome ideas," she said. "The whole concept of this school is you're on your own, make your own way, figure it out for yourself. You're an adult now; you're in con- trol of your education; take care of it." Art and Design senior Kevin Tud- ball didn't realize that the change had been made until he showed up for school in September 2002. "I'm not too disappointed ... I was able to get where I needed to go." He assessed the positives and negatives of the curriculum change. "With any change, there's going to be that shakiness," he said of the adjustments to the curriculum. "There's always the crossover peri- od. It's been kinda cool to be part of the process of making it better, and there's been frustrations, but they're usually pretty easy to over- come ... (The curriculum has) defi- nitely made me better-rounded." Art and Design freshman Devon Russell went through two years in LSA before transferring. He has mixed feelings about the variety of media that students are required to sample as freshmen and sopho- mores. "It's pretty rigid, unfortunately. There isn't a lot you can do, as far as some of the other colleges go," he said. But "everybody should have a pretty broad understanding of art going into it, not to mention the fact that having a bunch of dil- ettantes once they graduate isn't a bad thing...some of it's irritating, because not everybody likes paint, not everybody likes clay, so it's hard because you don't get to always nec- essarily play to your strengths," he added. One student whose work reflects many aspects of the new curricu- lum is Art and Design senior Lauren Hughes. She's combining skills she's learned working with clay, paint and design .during the twelve credits she'll have this year to create her IP, which will consist of religious art- work on clay tiles and an accompa- nying book. Although six credits per semester is a lot of-work, "I don't think (the IP) has been too much." Still, she admitted, "This is all I'm working on ... It's taking up all my time." Even if she and her class may have been "guinea pigs" for the new cur- riculum, Hughes has made the most of it. "I liked taking all those dif- ferent classes. I wanted to do that; that's why I came here," she said. Many students have had trouble adjusting to the new Art and Design curriculum, which S omething changed on North Campus about four years ago. At the beginning of the fall 2002 semester, the incoming freshman class of 2006 entered a whole new School of Art and Design. Dean Bryan Rogers and Associate Dean Mary Schmidt had come from Carnegie Mellon University two years before, and with them, they brought plans to create more opportunities and spaces for student exhibitions, attract better speakers for the school's weekly lecture series and do more with alumni donors to improve facilities and programs for students. Sounds like a great idea, right? But there was one more improvement that Rogers and Schmidt wanted to make when they got to the University. They had a plan, developed with the school's faculty over two years, to revamp the school's curriculum and degree require- ments. The new curriculum would introduce freshmen and sophomores to the basics of a wide variety of media while they learned to develop thematic ideas in their art. It would also allow freedom for juniors and seniors to choose the classes in the various disciplines they wanted. Above all, emphasize conceptual development over rote learning practices - intel- lectual exploration over set academic paths. Students were to have the school's wide range of faculty and facility resources at their disposal when they were young. Later in the curriculum, after experience working with a variety of media and developing their own conceptual ten- dencies and ideas, they could take advantage of relative free- dom and openness later. For each student, the program would culminate in a year-long project - the Integrative Project, which would be developed, created and completed over two semesters of six-credit independent study during senior year. A sizeable donation from alum Penny Stamps also created individual studios for each senior to work on IPs in the Art and Architecture building. The change was to take effect with the new Art and Design undergraduates entering the first semester of the 2002 school year. After a four-year transitional period - after students who had entered the school under the old curriculum had graduated - the linear arrangement of courses into disci- plines under the old curriculum would be a faint memory. The fact that the school once offered majors within the Bachelor of Fine Arts program would be nearly forgotten. Rogers and Schmidt had both worked at Carnegie-Mellon, when a similar change had occurred. Both anticipated prob- lems; they thought that they were ready for the rocky transi- tion that invariably comes with a change of this magnitude at such a large, prestigious university. But when the class of 2006 showed up to start the new cur- riculum, the students who made up the classes of '03, '04, and '05 - who were still following established programs from the "old" curriculum - didn't just go away. Some of these students were told that the switch wouldn't affect them nega- tively, but time proved otherwise. After a few years, some students under both the new and the old curricula had problems with the transition. Younger students who hadn't known about the curriculum change when they applied hadn't anticipated the requirements of the new program. Some saw the relative smattering of informa- tion they received in the seven-week Tools, Materials and Processes courses in media like metal, paint, clay and video as pointless because the courses were too short and students couldn't progress past a relatively basic skill level. Others pro- tested the lack of choice presented in the new curriculum's first four semesters. Other students - those who were sophomores and juniors when the new curriculum was put into effect - had prob- lems, too. When courses that students had anticipated tak- ing, courses that were part of specializations that students were following - became scarce to make room for the new curriculum's courses. And when these students brought what seemed to be very practical problems to the administration, many felt that the administration reassured them without tak- ing steps to create solutions, or that their problems were flatly ignored. But a lot of students did something about it: They trans- ferred to other schools of the University or to other univer- sities altogether. They banded together and formed groups like the Art Students League and the Society of Art Students. Others formed unofficial groups and attempted to contact deans and other high-ranking University officials to make their positions known. But even though the administration made a few adjustments to work out unanticipated kinks in the curriculum, some students felt their grievances and ideas for improvements were ignored. At the end of April 2006, the students who have been the "guinea pigs" under the new curriculum will be the first class to graduate under the new program. And while many of the old curriculum students have already graduated, some of those whom the change affected the most are fifth-year seniors, often dual-degree students or students who transferred there during or just before the change occurred. Now that the transition is almost over and the new cur- riculum will have been solidly instated, it's time to ask a few questions. The administration's take Dean Bryan Rogers and Associate Dean Mary Schmidt had a vision for the art school when they cane here from Carnegie Mellon in 2000. The ideology behind many of the changes and improvements the deans planned to make was based on a combination of practicality and conceptual development. Big Thinking. It sets us apart. School of Information master's students look at all angles. The experience of working with digital libraries and studying Web search behaviors, text summarization, socio-technical capital, and multi-agent systems can take you far. In fact, you'll find SI expertise a part of the U-M Library's massive digitization project of more than seven million volumes. Be part of it. Connect with SI. Before SI: BA, English At Si: Tailored After SI: Manager, Google Print S~OO 1 orRM cQII U NIXVERS ITY F(I- II IRAN si.umich.edu/info Our master's program students hold degrees from more than 70 academic majors. Pick up your SI application CD for both the master's and doctoral programs in 403B West Hall or request one online at si.umich.edu/info. Earn your Master of Science in Information in Archives and Records Management; Human-Computer Interaction; Information Economics, Management and Policy; Library and Information Services; and Tailored. Our Ph.D. program prepares you for research and teaching. 48 - The Michigan Daily - Thursday, December 8, 2005 The Michigan Daily -