Core Areas

Fine Arts (CAFA) and Humanities (CAHU)

Students must satisfactorily complete three (3) credit hours of approved coursework in Fine Arts (CAFA) and six (6) credit hours of approved coursework in Humanities (CAHU).

The Fine Arts core area is constituted of courses from the visual arts, music, dance, theatre, and creative writing.

Courses in the Fine Arts:

• Address the creative experience.
• Engage students in theoretical and/or experiential study of aesthetic dimensions.
• Address perspectives of both the artist and the public.

Course content:

• Focuses upon the meaning, theories, history, products and processes of the fine arts by individuals and groups.
• Provides students with an appreciation of how the fine arts contribute to the ways of knowing, the human experience, and contemporary life.
• Courses may be interdisciplinary, considering the interrelationships among the disciplines of the fine arts as well as other core areas of knowledge.

The Humanities are those areas of inquiry in which we turn our attention to ourselves.

Studies in Humanities foster students' ability to:

• Analyze beliefs.
• Make sound judgments about the evidence that supports them.
• Communicate through language and other symbolic media.
• Be creative in expressing themselves and in interpreting how others express themselves creatively.

Courses in the Humanities:

• Explore methods and theories of criticism that apply to our creative, expressive, and communicative actions.
• Enable students to appreciate different cultures and traditions within our own society.
• Increase students' knowledge of human civilizations, past and present, and their languages, literature, art, religion, and philosophy.
• Courses that fulfill these goals will emphasize the use of primary texts and sources and require writing assignments in which students produce a sustained argument in continuous prose.