program Outcomes

Communication Competence

"Learners will become effective communicators in their discipline."

To pair with the Communication Competence Artifact, I chose my Midterm Research Paper from ART-131 (Drawing I). While I had other papers I could choose, even other art papers from ART-111 (Art Appreciation), this one felt like the right pick. In this paper I researched the artist Claude Monet, a painter from the Impressionist Era, and one I thoroughly enjoy the work of! Rereading it, I felt proud of what I could communicate within this work, and due to me taking it after refining not only my presentation skills but also my writing skills, this was the best choice for me. There was a sense of refined growth in it I wanted to showcase in my ePortfolio. I took ART-131 in the Spring of 2021 for 16 weeks, and while it was arguably my most challenging semester as stated before in various other reflections, I came to realize while putting the ePortfolio together that the pressure created diamonds from the coals of my struggles.

My first goal was to paint (figuratively) the audience a proper image of who Monet was and his impact on Impressionism. While I enjoyed Monet’s artwork, I still only had a surface level understanding of who he was as a person and an artist. To achieve this goal, I attempted to emphasize Monet’s story with the research I was conducting. Monet himself had a rocky start in his artistic career, one filled with financial struggles and artistic criticism. Onlookers may also not have known that later on in Monet’s life his eyesight was failing because of cataracts, which impacted his ability to perceive shapes clearly and color properly. As an artist though, he still created, and even with the weakened vision a lot of his most famous works were during those later years (like the water lily paintings!). While I was writing this paper, I did my best to encapsulate all of Claude Monet- in many ways- the kick starter of the Impressionist Era. I found it a bit difficult to piece together what may be deemed as “substantial” parts of his life, as the paper needed to strike a fair balance between the artist and his art. However by explaining Monet’s life story I aimed to create a better understanding of his artwork too.

My second goal pertaining to this project was to showcase and communicate the artistic qualities of Monet’s work that made him so memorable. Perhaps readers now knew of his personal appeal, but what were the formal qualities of his actual artwork which created such a resounding impact? To achieve my goal, I touched upon his two most prominent qualities, light and color, and described them in great detail. I had to take extra care in this section as I did not want to confuse the reader with winding rhetoric. I needed to make things clearer, not blurrier, and so I used a lot of descriptive words and took them along my personal lens of analysis. I voiced my observations of what colors were seen on the artwork and how they cohesively blended together. For my talk on light I commented on how his usage of it created a diffused but dreamy and vibrant effect. When I was describing these qualities I also made sure to pick artworks that had a major visual contrast between each other, to give a greater range of how those elements were brought out in Monet’s art. It took a little time to properly note down what I was seeing, but overall it was a process I found a lot of reward in doing.

Going into a career in the arts is something I want to achieve and as a result this paper served as a way for me to showcase my knowledge of the formal qualities of art that a famous artist utilized. It was one thing to know that someone is popular, but another to actually frame out why/how they were. While making art is obviously the main integral pillar of an art career, I know that being able to see the qualities in a piece that make them so great and being able to communicate that with others or pointing them out to yourself so you can learn is also really important. Overall the paper pushed me to show my growth as not only an artist but a proper communicator in what is my future career. It was a paper I enjoyed writing greatly, and is a representation of how far I have come in my skills and knowledge.

Creative Problem Solving

"Learners will apply appropriate techniques to solving problems within their discipline."

I thought long and hard about what artifact to choose for Creative Problem Solving. I was aware that Biology or Math classes were commonly used but the work I did in those courses did not feel like the best representation of the artifact. In the end, I went with my Proposal Paper from ENG-112. The class was taken for 16-weeks during the Fall of 2020, and the paper itself was a follow-up to my Research paper done in the same class. While my research paper addressed the problems of a lack of diversity within the arts (and why this problem was an important one to address), this paper involved me proposing some hypothetical solutions to combat that particular widespread issue. Due to it being the direct successive paper to the proposal, I was a little intimidated by it. Sure, I was well aware of verbalizing and explaining the problems within the arts industry, but to come up with and explain plausible solutions? Even with research, I was worried they would not be believable enough.

Considering I had already well addressed what my problem pertaining to my paper's subject matter was, I needed to have goals that were oriented towards the solution. In that case, my first goal was to start ‘thinking outside of the box' in order to start brainstorming possible ideas/proposals I could use in my paper. While general Google searches might have given me some answers, I wanted to form my own personal basis of “answers” first in order to refine my search- and that is how I achieved my goal. If I started off with the ideas of others first, I felt that my proposal might be weaker due to them not being of my own opinion. If I worked in the opposite direction first- that being to come up with my own solution and searching for proposed solutions later- I would be reaffirming my points rather than relying on the points of others. While that might seem like an inconsequential change in the overall process, I felt the flow of my proposal seemed to be firmer as a result. By brainstorming my own ideas and then researching to confirm if similar ideas were actualized, the message of “Not only do I think this is a viable solution but this has been done and has shown results” becomes more apparent in my essay too.

My second goal with this proposal was to be able to both support and stick to a solution I suggested. I achieved this goal by only concentrating on a select number of solutions, and finding real-life examples to bolster what I was saying. It was a little harder to achieve this goal as when in the process of doing this paper, I felt that my solutions felt like they had too many holes in them. There seemed as if there were so many “What-ifs?” but I really tried to dig into my resources and thoroughly analyze all these real-life implementations of similar ideas I had. I laid out how those real-life solutions ran and gave out variations of what locations had used to curb the issues as well. All of my examples and “guides” were deliberately chosen to be of varying locations and implementation styles. By sticking to a small group of examples, I could give a more focused and critical analysis of them in order to help strengthen my own proposal.

By intertwining all of that (the analysis and various real-life cases of an implemented solution) I was able to form a more solid answer on my front.

Overall, I actually was not completely satisfied with the end result of this paper, though that might be due in part to the fact I overthink greatly. Despite that, I think this paper is the best showcase of how I tackled a meaningful problem and gave a solution to it. This issue of diversity in the arts is perhaps one that will still be dealt with far beyond my years, and in many ways, my own proposal felt so amateur if it were to actually be implemented. But I chose this artifact and decided to reflect on it as it proved to be an assignment I had been challenged and had grown the most in. I was able to not only properly communicate the problem, but also create a solution to it that was well-researched and analyzed. Together with my paper that I used for the Written Communication Core Skill, the piece of that particular mosaic portion became more whole and smoothed out somewhat. All of these things made me proud of this assignment despite the challenges.

Understanding the Arts and the Human Experience

"Learners will demonstrate an understanding of the arts and humanities in historical and cultural contexts."

This particular program outcome and the accompanying artifact were something I was very excited to reflect on. There were a lot of options I had ready in my hand, and at the end of the day, I chose a Final Paper I had done for a fully online 16-week class in the Spring of 2020. This assignment would be my Concert Report from MUS-110, otherwise known as Music Appreciation. No one could really predict what would happen in the early months of 2020, and in a multitude of ways I had no inkling of an idea as the semester progressed closer and closer to Finals Week how my writing of this concert report would go. This class was fully virtual, and because of the onslaught of the pandemic, our options of concert viewings were also in a virtual format. It was an odd feeling, as while listening to music online through this course was normal, to do the same for a concert of all things felt like we were missing the full experience. We were in ways, and while this performance was one I did not choose to analyze in my concert report, I remembered briefly viewing one man doing his “concert” with his piano at home alone. It was quite an odd picture to view now looking back, but I think the mental image of one man surrounded by the background of his home, piano and music in hand, is quite poignant to the times we faced and still are facing.

Due to the nature in which we were tasked with listening to our chosen concert (that being via an electronic device instead of in-person), I made my first goal be to create an environment that would best promote the listening experience. The best way to experience this concert would be to listen to it in-the-flesh as it was performed, but while that option was made impossible I wanted to give the music the best viewing I could possibly have. It would never amount to the real thing, but by doing what I could, I knew my analysis and enjoyment of the evaluation and concert would be so much better. To achieve this goal, I cleaned up my working space the most and grabbed my pair of headphones to use. Then during the concert, I tried to put in the effort of not moving around so much and at certain intervals, closing my eyes and just listening to the concert through my headphones. Some of these things- like the cleanup and staying still, were to avoid getting distracted by external factors within my home. I did the other things like my headphones and closing my eyes to really zone in on the auditory experience. This was a music course after all! I needed to focus on sounds over the sights. While a simpler goal, in my opinion, I was really happy that I did what I did as I was able to almost fully experience the concert in the way that it should have been.

My second goal of this concert report was to carefully process what I was listening to and writing about to properly convey my thoughts and feelings. This assignment was a highly analytical one as much as it was an experience-based one. While there was some introductory research to describe to readers the history of the pieces being performed, much of this report would ride on what I felt viewing and listening to this concert. As such, I needed to be very mindful of getting my observations across clearly, and in the listening aspect, I needed to be conscious of what I was feeling during the concert and why. Achieving this goal involved me thinking carefully about word choice, proper usage of imagery laced with expressions that would show my understanding, and a personal examination of my thought process during and after the concert. While this was a couple of years ago I do remember having a blank sheet of paper with me to jot down notes and initial emotions I felt during my listening experience. Afterward, I remember going back over those scribbles, and refining them, while also taking a couple of minutes to just lean back on my chair and ruminate on the whole performance. I didn’t want to immediately jump into writing the paper, rather I let myself really think about what I had just watched. In the end, this all really helped me be able to fully report back on not only my feelings of the experience but also be able to formally analyze it.

Even with just a mezzo-soprano and one piano, I recall really loving this being able to do this as my final in the course. I had never really been to a classical music concert before and my interactions with music were solely on the casual level. However, with this report, I learned to consciously be more aware of the present and translate those experiences into something meaningful. In the Summer of 2021, I was able to actually experience multiple concerts performed by students my age at a summer program I attended for five weeks, and while sitting to wait for the music to start, I kept thinking back to this course. Genuinely, experiencing things in real-life truly cannot compare to viewing one on video. However thanks to this concert report I was able to gain a better appreciation for the music I come into contact with and dig into the history of each. While I probably will still only experience music in the causal sense, I have a fuller view of “art” in the auditory sense as well.

Social Scientific Literacy

"Learners will demonstrate an understanding of social science methodologies in order to explain the consequences of human actions."

For my artifact for Social Scientific Literacy I chose to attach my Final Exam Essays from HIS-132 (American History II), a class I remember quite fondly of despite the switch online mid-session due to COVID-19 in Spring of 2020. For a 16-week course, half in person and then the other half online, I remember enjoying the class a lot. I was and still am someone who enjoys hearing about history, and so coming into this class after its precursor HIS-131 I was quite excited despite its somewhat heavier workload. In this paper, the prompts I chose to write the essays on were about the legacies of the New Deal and the successes of the Civil Rights movement along with how challenges still remain in the present day. If my final in MUS-110 depended on analyzing my own experiences in the present, this final done in the same semester was dependent on my analysis on the experiences of other people in the past (that is history after all!).

My first goal was to put into perspective the viewpoints of those within the event- in order to better understand the effects said events had on everyone at that current point in history. To even start on answering my given prompts I knew I had to both look at these events from both the perspective of someone looking back in time, but also someone who might have lived in the moment of that time. By having a good sense of both, a more thorough and thought-provoking analysis could be created. To achieve this goal I remember I simply just delved into as much research as I could using SPCC’s Library Database. I stuck primarily to the “American History Online” database, and by this point in my run with this course and its predecessor, it was a tried and true research companion I could consult. I did not necessarily throw as many sources I could onto my paper, but rather picked the ones that could best help in supporting my points. However, what I did not use greatly helped me passively absorb this sort of “setting” I needed to present. All the reading helped me set a more effective tone, and in turn, I was both better able to understand the perspective of those who were immediately impacted by the event, but also able to better articulate the ins and outs of it all.

My second goal with this assignment was to thoughtfully analyze those historical events and how exactly people were affected later down the line. My first goal was more oriented towards the short-term “after” but as far-reaching as historical events, programs, movements, and all variations go, I needed to address the long-term “after” as well. To accomplish this particular goal I shifted my focus to research that was more so focused on said long-term impacts. Thankfully, my research proved fruitful as for example I was able to showcase the intended purpose of various acts and groups spawned from the New Deal, but also tell the audience that despite the intended (and resulted) good, the New Deal was also disproportionately aiding certain groups of people. While this was a goal very similar to the first one, achieving it was just as necessary. If I had only looked and written my essay from the perspective of those who had been impacted at the moment, I would have lost a lot of meaning (and points) by ignoring the fact I needed to look into the further beyond, (and even the then “present”) of these events to give the prompt a full answer.

History has always been a prominent shard in my own little mosaic of life. I for the longest time always went on occasional sprees of history videos on YouTube just for the fun of it. It was and is so interesting to get a glimpse of what was before, and what still remains of the actions people before me took. Coming to the end of this American History II course, I was a little bitter, not at the course itself, but how I could no longer hear some stories and details of history in the flesh. Despite that, this essay served to close this chapter of my listening, reading, and researching into American history (for this course), and in ways, it also showcases how far I was able to bring (and tell) my understanding of people who had affected America before me.