Curriculum for Creative Media Major

Your career in creative media begins now with Champlain’s Upside-Down Curriculum. Discover the difference that doing on day one has on your success.

Creative Media Curriculum

Our Upside-Down Curriculum is designed to prepare creative media students like you with a comprehensive understanding of fine arts. You’ll gain a strong set of skills in multiple media forms while tackling big-picture ideas. You’ll explore your artistic process by evaluating, deconstructing, and revising your work in innovative production classes and seminars.

The Creative Media curriculum covers a wide range of topics, including your role as a creative practitioner within your local community. You’ll consider topics such as how to market yourself and identify exhibition or publication opportunities. You’ll gain a rich artistic skill set, develop your own ideas about artistic expression, and push creative boundaries in unprecedented ways. Plus, it emphasizes a hands-on approach, giving you opportunities to engage in portfolio-building applications of media techniques, tools, and concepts.

As a Creative Media student, you will choose two focus areas — a primary focus area and a complementary focus area.

Learning Outcomes for Creative Media

First Year
Fall Semester
- CRE 125 Integrated Studio Foundations
- XXX Primary Focus Area Course (1/6)
- XXX Studio Production Elective - 100 Level
- COR 101 Navigating Higher Education
- COR 102 First Year Inquiry: Reading, Writing, &
Spring Semester
- CRE 100 Making Art
- CRE 180 Making Culture: Seminar in Art & Popular
- XXX Primary Focus Area Course (2/6)
- COR 103 Navigating Your Information Landscape
- COR 104 First Year Inquiry: Making, Doing, &
Second Year
Fall Semester
- CRE 225 Art and Social Engagement
- XXX Complementary Focus Area Course (1/4)
- MTH XXX Math Elective
- COR 201 Core Foundations: Making Meaning Through Science
- COR 202 Interdisciplinary Perspectives
Spring Semester
- CRE 240 Creative Media: Professional Practices I
- CRE 250 Creative Media Projects I
- XXX Primary Focus Area Course (3/6)
- XXX Complementary Focus Area Course (2/4)
- COR 203 Core Foundations: Making Meaning Through Culture
- COR 204 Theoretical Perspectives
Third Year
Fall Semester
- CRE 310 Art and Global Perspectives
- XXX Primary Focus Area Course (4/6)
- XXX Complementary Focus Area (3/4)
- COR 301 Core Foundations: Connecting Place and Identity
- COR 302 Field Methods
Spring Semester
- CRE 350 Creative Media Portfolio 2
- XXX Primary Focus Area Course (5/6)
- SCI XXX Natural Science w/Lab
- COR 303 Core Foundations: Connecting Past and Present
- COR 304 Digital Methods
Fourth Year
Fall Semester
- CRE 400 Creative Media Professional Practices II
- XXX Primary Focus Area Course (6/6)
- XXX Complementary Focus Area Course (4/4)
- XXX Upper-Level Elective (1/2)
- XXX General Elective
Spring Semester
- CCC 410CRE Creative Media Capstone
- XXX Professional Practices Elective
- XXX Upper-Level Elective (2/2)
- XXX General Elective

This course introduces students to a variety of tools, processes and campus labs and to the production of creative works that incorporate tangible objects, text, audio and video. The emphasis is on collaboration, skillbuilding and the creative integration of multiple media.

Prerequisites
Credits	3

Why go to college? What does it mean to be educated? In this course you'll begin to answer these questions. We'll explore the academic expectations of higher education, college as a diverse community, and the significance of education around the world. By examining how these issues are negotiated and implemented at Champlain and elsewhere, you'll gain perspective on your own education and a deeper understanding of the ways that the college experience can be both liberating and transformative.

Prerequisites	Take Cor-102 concurrently.
Credits	3

Inquiry is about learning how to ask the right kinds of questions, and figuring out how to answer those questions through discussion and reflection. This course introduces you to the types of inquiry necessary to succeed at Champlain and beyond. You will explore the intersections of reading, writing, and thinking by focusing on a specific topic or theme. You will approach that focus through the interrogation of relevant texts and analysis that draws upon multiple analytical frameworks. For detailed descriptions of the individual sections of this course, cut and paste the following link into your browser: bit.ly/core-year-one

Prerequisites	Take COR-101 concurrently.
Credits	3

This foundational course for Creative Media program students will explore areas necessary for artistic exploration and achievement. These areas include: inspiration, mimesis, essence, abstraction, mixed media, execution and audience. We will draw upon several artistic disciplines in this class, namely visual art, creative writing, interactive design, filmmaking and videography, games, music and sound, and performance.

Prerequisites	Must be enrolled in CREM.BFA, or by permission of Dean.
Credits	3

In this course, students will gain a common grounding in art and media analysis through theoretical, critical and ethical approaches to art and aesthetics, in preparation for upper level production courses. Questions explored include: How have the creations of artists and media makers shaped the culture in which we live? How do the narratives, images, and experiences of fine art and popular media help us understand, describe and interpret the world? What opportunities are there today for artists to make an impact and contribute to social discourse?

Prerequisites	Take 0 credits; Creative Media BFA majors. Students from other programs by permission of Program Director.
Credits	3

What makes an argument good or bad? What counts as evidence in our post-truth world? How can you understand and assess the truth value of a claim when you're not an expert? In this course you'll learn rhetorical strategies about how to examine arguments and types of evidence in different disciplines and fields of study. To help learn these strategies, you will do close readings of texts from a variety of disciplines in the liberal arts and sciences, popular culture, and social media.

Prerequisites	Take COR-104 concurrently.
Credits	3

This course introduces you to interdisciplinary inquiry using applied, project-based, and/or experiential methods. Regardless of the specific course focus, you'll have opportunities for making and doing interdisciplinary knowledge creation through a variety of approaches and activities. You will collaborate with other students, iterate on ideas, and work to develop a project. For detailed descriptions of the individual sections of this course, cut and paste the following link into your browser: bit.ly/core-year-one

Prerequisites	Take Cor-103 concurrently.
Credits	3

In this hands-on production course students work collaboratively to conceptualize and produce creative media projects in response to the needs of an external community partner, or to an issue or situation in the broader community. Students will explore their own roles as creative practitioners within their local communities, and how to combine multiple media to create effective public artworks.

Prerequisites	Complete 27 credits; Students from other programs with 27 credits by approval.
Credits	3

Science holds an elevated place in society. The knowledge and meaning that science makes are seen as having a particular and special value. This course explores knowledge and meaning making in order to allow a thoughtful analysis of, and then engagement with, science as a way of knowing, and then engages with the methods and theories of the sciences themselves, to understand the analytical, creative, and generative possibilities of science.

Prerequisites	Take COR-101, COR-102, COR-103, COR-104.
Credits	3

While each section of COR 202 addresses a different problem, issue, or topic, they all focus on interdisciplinary research. You will collect, analyze, and assess information from different disciplines in order to recognize patterns, contextualize arguments and synthesize ideas while collaborating on a project. Emphasis will be placed on helping you translate and apply what you learn about interdisciplinary research to other professional contexts. For detailed descriptions of the individual sections of this course, cut and paste the following link into your browser: bit.ly/core-year-two

Prerequisites	Take COR-101, COR-102, COR-103, COR-104.
Credits	3

Students will explore and develop a variety of topics to assist in a successful launch of their career in the creative industries. These include professional practices, identifying exhibition or publication opportunities, portfolio building, marketing oneself, and using social media tools and networking. The course allows students to work on materials specific to gaining internships and employment. Students will analyze and apply ethical codes of conduct to a variety of scenarios applicable to their industry.

Prerequisites	Complete 30 credits. Creative Media BFA majors only.
Credits	1

Combine the skills and ideas you've acquired in multiple areas of creative media studies to begin producing a body of work that is professionally executed and has conceptual integrity. Through a combination of class critique and special studio sessions, you will strive to realize work that reflects your unique creative vision.

Prerequisites	COMPLETE CRE-200.
Credits	3

Culture impacts everything we do, experience, and learn, but what is culture? Where does it come from, how does it form, and why does it have such a wide and deep impact on people's lives? This course explores culture as a system of meaning and meaning-making in order to allow for a more thoughtful analysis of, and then engagement with, cultural texts and media using different methodological approaches.

Prerequisites	Take COR-101, COR-102, COR-103, COR-104.
Credits	3

In this course, you will go in depth about a theoretical perspective that asks you to interrogate systems of power and power relationships. You will learn about the history of that perspective, including how it too was shaped by multiple contexts and compares with other viewpoints. You will use that perspective to analyze a specific topic, collection of texts, or cultural phenomena. For detailed descriptions of the individual sections of this course, cut and paste the following link into your browser: bit.ly/core-year-two

Prerequisites	Take COR-101, COR-102, COR-103, COR-104.
Credits	3

In this course students undertake an exploration of themselves as creative practitioners within a changing global context. Through a combination of readings, lectures, activities, and production of creative work, students will engage with the following questions: How does the flow of ideas, information and people across borders impact aesthetic forms? How do artists represent or negotiate cultural identity in a globalizing world? How do artists respond to issues (social, political, cultural, environmental) of global significance?

Prerequisites	Creative Media majors only and 57 completed credits
Credits	3

Where we are shapes how we understand ourselves and each other. In this course, we will dig into the relationship between place and identity. We will learn how to think spatially, recognizing how one's identity is situated within and constructed through movement through different spaces--be they natural and built environments, rural and urban, or actual and virtual. COR 301 will help us understand the complex meanings of identity in a world defined by movement and change.

Prerequisites	Take COR-101, COR-102, COR-103, COR-104, COR-201, COR-202, COR-203, COR-204
Credits	3

Field methods are a collection of practices used in the sciences, arts, and humanities to understand phenomena in situ or as it is happening in a specific time and place. In this course, we will apply one or more field methods to research a topic, theme, or question that varies by section. We will learn practices associated with research in the field including but not limited to participant observation, data collection, and experimentation in order to navigate an uncontrolled environment. We will also examine the power dynamics between the researcher, informant, and subject matter to help us understand how, if not practiced ethically, field methods can create or reinforce biases rather than helping us learn with and make sense of the world around us. For detailed descriptions of the individual sections of this course, cut and paste the following link into your browser: bit.ly/core-year-three

Prerequisites	Take COR-101, COR-102, COR-103, COR-104, COR-201, COR-202, COR-203, COR-204
Credits	3

In this upper level portfolio class you will learn to refine your creative vision and hone your artistic craft. A panel of faculty and special guests will provide critique and challenge you to push your creative work further. Special studio sessions will further enrich and expand your artistic practice.

Prerequisites	Complete CRE-250, CRE-300
Credits	3

By learning from the past, we can make sense of the present and prepare for the future. In this course, we will learn how the 21st century has been and continues to be shaped by past social practices, ethical frameworks, power relations, and discourses. COR 303 is a course about how we know what we know about the past, and the ways different narratives about the past shape the present. Making connections between past and present will help us better understand how to live and make decisions in a globalized world defined by constant change.

Prerequisites	Take COR-101, COR-102, COR-103, COR-104, COR-201, COR-202, COR-203, COR-204
Credits	3

Digital methods are widely used forms of inquiry that employ technological tools to interrogate research questions important to the humanities and sciences (including the social sciences). Some examples include digital archiving, data mining, and story mapping. In this course, we will use one or more digital methods or tools to research a topic, theme or question that varies by section, with the express purpose of critiquing and reflecting on its application. This includes an examination of the values, flaws, and impacts of the methods or tools we are using, paying particular attention to their ethical implications and power dynamics. For detailed descriptions of the individual sections of this course, cut and paste the following link into your browser: bit.ly/core-year-three

Prerequisites	Take COR-101, COR-102, COR-103, COR-104, COR-201, COR-202, COR-203, COR-204
Credits	3

Does an artist carry a responsibility to champion new technology, preserve culture, or speak to human rights? Is newer necessarily better? In addition to wrestling with such questions, in this third Creative Media Salon we examine issues of self-branding, marketing, professional presentation, and other key career-oriented issues that impact innovative artists. Students will discover where they fit in, and as importantly, where they don't. This will lead to a plan for how to position oneself upon graduation.

Prerequisites	Complete CRE-300, CRE-350
Credits	3

The college capstone is an opportunity for students to pursue a self-directed experience in their professional program that intentionally integrates their liberal learning in the Core curriculum with their program learning. In addition to the substantive professional-based hands-on project in this class, the capstone will include a professional ethics component and a self-evaluation/self-reflection component.

Prerequisites	Must complete COR-310, COR-320, and two sections of COR-330
Credits	4

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