Hi. Welcome. I'm Jason Sobottka, and I'm going to take you on a brief unscripted video tour of the applied Art illustration bachelor degree that I designed for Lake Washington Institute of Technology. You know, minimize my screen. And I'm going to take you to the college's public facing catalog page that showcases this degree. This is the same page a potential student would be reviewing if they were looking to apply for this program, and all credit for this page and the web design goes to the college. I designed the degree, but none of the web design here. So after that initial throat clearing, I also want to point out that I worked with Dean Sally Heilstedt, who is the Dean of instruction for the General Education area in the scoping proposal and approval process of this degree. And I also was supported by Gail Lawnicki, the instructional tech aide for the Visual Arts Department. And of course, I'm very, very grateful for all of the work of all the full time and adjunct professors who teach not only for this degree, but for all the feeder programs at LW tech. That could be pathways into this particular degree program. And so when we were initially analyzing the need for this degree, all of the all of the degrees in Washington have to have a strong workforce component. We have to show that these degrees meet a need in industry, and that our students will be properly trained for employment within those industries. And so when we first started in analyzing the need, we did see that we could have done like a applied fine arts degree, a studio gallery focus degree, and that there was data that showed that, uh, that students could be employed in the Puget Sound area with such a degree. However, the offerings that our students could pursue exponentially grew. When we partnered with our existing design program and our existing multimedia game program. Once the gaming and the design courses were added into this degree and we added the illustration component, students could pursue a whole host of 2D or 3D creative careers. They could work as package designers, as visual artists, as commercial artists, as illustrators, as scientific illustrators, or as art directors. Uh, there's a lot of opportunities that our graduates are competitive for. And so the the other initial things that we considered when analyzing the need for the degrees, the fact is, is a lot of colleges in Washington state are pursuing applied bachelor degrees for two important reasons. The first is there's just not enough open spots in bachelor programs in the state. So this is increasing capacity for students who want to pursue a bachelor's degree of any of any discipline. The second is many of our colleges work, um, including like Washington Institute of Technology. You have access to your degrees that are effectively sometimes terminal degrees because they don't transfer well to a wide variety of four year institutions. So by offering these applied bachelor degrees, we're opening opportunities and pathways for students with arts degrees to pursue their bachelor degree without having to go back and take a bunch of additional lower division credits to get them prepared for upper division coursework. So the last thing that I wanted to point out about the pathway aspects to this degree is if a student was interested in pursuing their two year degree and then applying for the selective admission program and earning their bachelor degree, and they wanted to work as, say, a leader in a cultural non-profit, in a museum, or work as a college professor. They would want to pursue a master's degree. And the college president, Doctor Amy Morrison, forged two relationships, one with Central Washington University in Ellensburg and the other at Washington State University in Pullman, Washington. And both of those colleges will look at our graduates competitively for their Master of Fine Arts program. So this really is an inexpensive and equitable pathway forward for a student to pursue a bachelor degree or potentially a master's degree, or, who knows, maybe even a PhD program in a very efficient, straightforward pathway, in a very unique course of study that is not really found at the other colleges in Washington state. The closest analog to this degree would probably be at 1 or 2 of the very expensive private colleges. And so here we have again, a much more equity. A bold path forward for students in Washington state. So what do our students do? They're basically combining fine art, drawing, painting and printmaking skills with industry ready software like the Adobe Creative Cloud, Figma, procreate, and 3D modeling programs such as Maya and Blender. And we're preparing our students for work in industries like visual design. They could be art directors, they could be digital artists, they could be commercial illustrators. They could do package design. There's really a lot of unique opportunities for graduates in this program. And so when we scroll down and we take a look at some of the details, one thing that I really wanted to do was make sure that people coming into this program with either an As degree from Lake Washington Institute of Technology or potentially an AA or FFA degree from another community college in Washington state or even out of state. I wanted them to be prepared for the coursework, but also minimize the amount of prerequisites. So basically, if students come in with a cumulative GPA of 2.5 or higher and they come from any creative field ranging ranging from graphic design, art, illustration, fashion design, interior design, as long as it's drawing focused, if it's color and value focused students have experience with perspective, they're probably going to be prepared for this degree. And all that we're requiring is a portfolio of five artwork artworks to share in a digital format and an image list. There's no fee, there's no application essay, there's no references. It's just your five portfolio works, your transcripts showing that you've got a 2.5 GPA or higher. And then the artwork with the list of the five images and their didactic information. So it's really an accessible degree to apply for. There are some prerequisites in addition to the gen ed. So they have to have the five credits of math and English and humanities, social science and a lab science. All that I'm requiring for this degree is some type of introduction to drawing, some type of painting class that might even be a digital painting class. It doesn't have to necessarily be a traditional oil or acrylic painting class, human life drawing, or some type of intermediate drawing. And sometimes those classes or those requirements are actually coupled with other classes. So sometimes we'll see intermediate drawing with then a software or a design class that's also a software class. So uh, we, we get pretty creative when we look at these, these um, these prerequisites. And then we do want to look for somebody who's got some experience doing some type of vector software, preferably Adobe Illustrator and some sort of image raster based software like Photoshop or Procreate. If students can just demonstrate they have that coursework or their portfolio shows, they have that coursework and they are definitely competitive for this program. And I'm just going to touch a little bit on the program requirements. These are the courses that students will learn in this degree. I wrote and designed all of the courses, all the catalog descriptions, and all of the course outcomes for each of the classes, and I will have some of these linked on my website for you to go into deeper detail, should you want to look at those. Every professor who's hired to teach these classes has a lot of academic freedom. As long as they're teaching to the course outcomes, they can take these courses in the design that they want to. So I want to stay faithful and true to their academic freedom. I have designed only the catalog description and the course outcomes for these classes. However, I do teach several of these courses and I'll mention that further on my website. But let's just go through basically quarter one. So in the fall, the cohort. So one of the great things about this program is it's a cohort model. So all of the students, unless they fall out of sequence, um, they'll take the classes together. So they'll build a good network that they can stay in communication with even after graduation. So they'll take their first advanced drawing class. Typically with me it's a drawing expression class. And basically that's going to it's going to do and it says it's going to do. They're going to express themselves through drawing. And in this first class looks at the fact that these are juniors in college, they're ready to get their portfolio ready. But this class is also designed to break people out of their comfort zone a little bit and get them out of their out of their sort of head space and learn some new things or challenge themselves to change their visual vocabulary. And. So after drawing expression comes cms's mass communication, where the students will study mass communication theory or mass media theory. There's a psychology of creativity class because in addition to needing a social science for the degree program, spending time learning about what makes people creative and how to battle creative blocks and roadblocks and creativity is something that every artist needs. In the winter or the second quarter of study, they'll take the multi cultural history of the Illustrated Image and Art history class. They'll take their first illustration class, and they'll take a technical writing English class. And many of the job descriptions that we saw when analyzing the need. There were several jobs that definitely wanted creative visual designers and artists, but who could also do some technical writing. So that's why that's in this program. Quarter three, they'll do their lab science. They'll do a human biology lab, which couples nicely with the figure of four making, which is an advanced life drawing class. And then they'll have a printmaking for designers class that rounds out their spring quarter in their junior year, moving into their senior year, which is going to dramatically change sort of the feel of the coursework. They're going to have a scientific illustration class. They'll have Art 400, which is their exhibition planning and marketing, which will not only expose students to getting prepared with their portfolio to apply for jobs, but also how they can do both a commercial art exploration, but also a fine art practice as well, and how to apply to shows how to promote their work, how to work as an entrepreneur, how to prepare their portfolio for employment. And they'll also begin working on the beginning stages of preparing their spring thesis exhibition. The Philosophy of Professional Ethics class is also offered. Um, there's also an elective option for this class. So if students want to take professional ethics, they can take that course. Or if they would like to take, uh, another art class as an elective, they have that option, too. In the fall of their senior year, winter of senior year, quarter five, they'll have their first senior studio class, where they will basically spend a lot of time working on existing artwork and creating new artwork and refining their work to get it ready for their final exhibition and portfolio. They'll do a digital design, fabrication and prototyping class, where they'll get to take their designs and go to a lab where they can explore laser cutting, where they could explore laser etching, where they can use CNC routers, the woodshop. They can do three dimensional printing, they can do additive casting and vacuum forming. They can actually take some of their 3D concepts and actually prototype them and sculpt them in that class. Then they'll take their math. 335 Computational design class, which is a design oriented math class that is extremely popular, like Washington Institute of Technology. And then they will finish their senior year with Art 402, their senior studio class, where they will put the absolute finishing touches on their wonderful portfolios. They'll do their final thesis exhibition in portfolio class, which gets them ready to apply to jobs in the industry, but also get their thesis exhibition installed and shared for the public to review. And then they'll take their final art history class undoing erasure in art history. And then when they complete their degree and they graduate, like I mentioned before, they could pursue a master's degree, if that's what they choose to do. So that's a quick overview of this degree. If you want to learn more about it, you can either visit the college's website or on my instructional design page. I will have some of selected courses where you can review and see the thought that I put into the design on the individual courses, and I'll also share some short videos that take you through a few of the courses that I myself teach, so I hope this was helpful. Thank you so much and I appreciate your time.