Mission: The Department of Visual Arts is committed to developing art and design professionals through educational experiences based on history, theory, and practice. We strive to help our students become creative problem solvers, visually literate, and culturally and aesthetically sensitive. As a provider of general education and through our outreach we help people understand the power of communication through visual media and the rich variety of ideas and cultural heritages that are represented in visual art and architecture.
Faculty:
All of our faculty are practicing professionals. With current faculty holding advanced degrees from universities across the nation and around the world, WSU DOVA takes pride that its faculty demonstrate the level of excellence we expect of our students.
Curriculum:
The DOVA curriculum is designed to offer students specialized majors in a wide
variety of emphases though not without first equipping them with a solid
foundation in art history and aesthetics. The Department is devoted to preparing
students to meet the demands of a challenging, diverse and rapidly changing
world by offering art history courses with a global perspective as well as
extensive and state-of-the-art instruction in digital media and photography.
To address the diverse needs of students, Weber State University confers
three degrees in the visual arts: B.A., B.S., B.F.A., and offers over seventy
different courses. These courses include areas such as: art teaching, ceramics,
digital media, drawing, metals/jewelry, painting, photography, printmaking,
sculpture,visual communications. The
department offers courses to non-art majors as well. As part of the students
general education they are required to take at least one course in the creative
arts. All students benefit from studio activity and analysis which sharpens
critical faculties, fosters creativity and encourages independent thinking. Art is the universal language through which we express our common aspirations and experiences. As such, it has always been a channel for appreciating and understanding the diversity of humankind.
Extended Curriculum:
In support of this curriculum, the Department offers a variety of programs. WSU's Art Gallery, for example, is conceived as a space set aside for the exhibition of works of art which exemplify those ideas and values that are taught as part of the University's curriculum in art. In this way the Gallery serves as a classroom and assumes a vital role in the curriculum.
The highly regarded DOVA Visiting Artist Lecture Series, now in its seventeenth consecutive year, also complements the curriculum as well as the Gallery program. As with the Gallery, the intention of this program is not only to enrich our own curriculum in the visual arts but also to contribute to a wider variety of programming within the Utah art community. Such programming is important for Utah artists as well as the many Utahns who cannot afford to travel to major cities. This project benefits the community at large by providing opportunities for Utahns to see and hear first hand nationally and internationally recognized artists.