NCCCS A+GD Program Next Steps

Posted on February 24, 2019 Updated on February 24, 2019

On 2/24/19, I attended the North Carolina Community College Fine Arts Conference Session NCCCS A+GD Program Next Steps at the Meroney Theater in Salisbury, NC moderated by Dr. Brian Morris of Catawba Valley Community College

Rather than a Professional development session, this was more of an Informal conversation. What do we want to capitalize on before we leave? Contact information will be a great step. Brian Morris will moderate and we can formalize and capitalize on resources.

We would like to bring the AFA back and increase the number of articulation agreements. We are tangentially related by adopting the ART track and GRD/GRA track. Where are these going to go? DME digital media technology program. Pasteup, Stat Camera are gone. Design thinking and UX is important now. Is it research, data analysis, storytelling? Is it software only? Managing this for articulation is important. AFA in visual art transfers, but our materials do not.

What should we discuss? Formalization requires contact and available people. We can decree today by consensus to be a group with standard boilerplate bylaws. Many people are on board. We want to talk about officers and facing the magnitude of challenges that the AFA faced. Creating the articulation agreements with universities may be difficult. CCP is difficult. We have a draft of the bylaws, and we’d like to get people together.

Does the A+GD degree name need to change? Does it mean what it used to mean? Are we media directors now? Is it digital Media. Having 15hrs of DME entitles you to a Digital Media Technology degree, and the other 50+ hours can be anything! To keep a healthy A+GD program means the needs must continue to move forward. We are working under old descriptions, but we are teaching the skills and methods we wish to teach. Do we want to push that? We find that there are formally 6 GRD Programs in the UNC System.

Articulation may be an issues if faculty do not have masters degrees in Graphic Design. There are some classes with UI/UX which need to be built and added. Some classes are still tlaking about pagemaker and/or coreldraw. These are topics to keep in mind moving forward.

Are masters degrees required? There are multiple degrees with BS, BFA, BA in Graphic Design, or Specialization in Graphic Design. Is business and marketing a good degree to complement the design backgroun? What ideas do we have to address this as a body? Graphic Design degrees are hard to transfer. Portfolios may not be good enough, or 4-year schools don’t want 2-year students. One problem is that the number of contact hours don’t transfer or run into the credit surcharge because they have the wrong credits. A 2-hour class cannot work, but it counts against the number of hours a student has taken which runs afoul of the credit max allowed for the “graduate in 4” system item for colleges.

Is articulation really important? The majority of some populations in some schools are returning 4-year students. The trouble is really the stigma of a 2-year degree holder. Keyword sniffers  block AAS in terms of employment. We are looking for 1-2 students a year. Maybe this is important and maybe its not as important.

What about private college relationships? some have made good deals by speaking with private schools in general? should we work to increase the deals we can make with other schools and examine those?

The idea of “stackable credentials” will be pushed in the future. Its really about the skillpath and job path that students can follow. Industry-specific credentials may be used in the future to out maneuver courses where they already have skills. How can we maintain the go-to credentials? A 4-yr school student who starts at a 2-yr school has a different track in mind. Where are our students going to go? We should focus our core strengths, and determine where we want our students to go and alter our classes based on that pathway.

We don’t want advisors to say “graphic design goes nowhere”. We want them to say “UNC-Charlotte will accept the GRD degree and here’s what credits you’ll get…”

What does this mean? We’ll need to meet once a year or so. WAKE TECH is close to the system office, and can make a nice meeting place which is centralized. The RTP campus outside of Durham is adequate.

Ms. Cobb of CVCC was then voted in as president. Mr. Compton of CPCC was voted in as Vice President. Ms. Holleran of CPCC was voted in as secretary. Ms. Cousar of CPCC was voted in as treasurer. These were all voted in for a 2-year term. At-Large members will need to be chosen. We’ll need representatives for at-large reps from 4-year schools and community colleges. We can continue this conversation during the wrap-up and also set some goals for ourselves and the conference next year.

We were then all invited to CVCC to visit the department and spaces. The meeting was then turned over to the new president, Ms Cobb.

brittany.holleran@cpcc.edu