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You know there's, there's any number of
MFA programs, even visual communication programs, out there.
The people that we have here that we pull from this market,
you know, are professionals that have been in the business for an average of,
you know, fifteen to twenty five years. Well, we started out taking
creative process course where we learn
what our creative process was. I didn't even realize I had a creative process
even though I've been using one thirty years. Design is a business.
Visual communication is a business. It's a commercial
application of this art form. You know we had several courses that were strongly
business but
in those courses we used our skills in art
and education to put them to practical use with that class.
I've been photographer, professional photographer for thirty years
and the project came about because I did a brainstorming
session with the professor, Martin _____, and
we threw out a bunch of ideas and
at one point the line went through photography, workshops, and
national parks. The program has
art, education, and business in it,
and this project kind of hits on all three of them. The project is
is to try to talk to Texas State Board of Education to instituting
local history courses in Texas public schools. So this book will be used as part of
the presentation to recruit partnerships
because one guy's not going to convince the Texas State Board of Education.
So, for me, it was a custom-made corse. It
had skills that I needed everywhere.
Kind of the third pillar in a program is teaching people how to teach.
Developing curriculum, whether
it's just for a class or entire university
is a whole nother animal and I think
you know a lot of times people don't spend enough time getting the education
to know how to do that right.
There's not a lot of a MFA programs that teach you how to teach
design thinking and design in general,
and that seems to be one thing that
is a stand out and I say that because of the graduates that we've had in this program
that have chosen to go into teaching,
everyone of them has had a job before graduation. So we have a hundred percent
job placement.
So we're kind of getting reputation for turning out some really great teachers
in the region.