Rick Hintze on tue 18 may 99
To those who care about the quality of education in studio art, and
particularly in ceramics, I would greatly appreciate your responses to the
questions listed below. I teach at Kirkwood Community College in Cedar
Rapids, Iowa and have been engaged in a battle with my dean over the issue of
teaching loads and content necessary to acceptable, college-level ceramics
courses, particularly beginning and second level courses. Our teaching load
had been five, six contact hour courses per semester, or 30 contact hours per
week. Through efforts I made a couple of years ago, we have now reduced this
to five, five contact hour courses per week, or 25 contact hours per week.
In the information I have been able to gather from most other community
colleges, the contact hour load has usually been 18, with some up to 20, and
the course load has been 3 to 4 courses per term (if all studio). Needless
to say, I find it impossible to keep up with the kind of load we have and do
an adequate job. My administrators seem to think all is fine and dandy and
wonder what I am talking about when I question this situation. In order to
fight this battle I need evidence from outside institutions. I would
appreciate your help in my efforts to convince my administration that our
studio art instruction situation needs to be changed.
Since I teach at a community college, I need two kinds of information:
1. Comparative data from community college instructors on loads
2. From four year colleges and universities, I need responses to questions
concerning essential content and the average amount of time per week spent on
various types of instruction.
Community College Loads:
What is the full-time teaching load if you teach all studio?
Number of courses per term?
Number of contact hours per week?
Do you have any gallery responsibilities?
What is the full-time teaching load for someone who teaches all
lecture courses?
Four year colleges and universities:
How essential are the following to a beginning ceramics course for transfer
to your institution? These questions are focused on instruction that takes
place primarily in groups, rather than individually, because these are the
areas that I feel are suffering the most in terms of preparation and time
allotted for due to the high teaching load.
Group critique/discussion of student work?
Amount of time (average) per week spent on
critique/discussion?
Lecture on technical information (clay, glazes, kilns,
firing)?
Amount of time (average) per week spent?
Lecture/discussion of slides or examples of historical, contemporary, or
former student examples?
Amount of time (average) per week spent?
Demonstration of techniques and processes?
Amount of time (average) per week spent?
Thank you so much for your responses. It would help if you could send them
to me at rickh@kccinter.net so it will be easy to separate your responses
from all of the clayart mail. Either way, I appreciate your help.
Rick Hintze
Tom Wirt on thu 20 may 99
Rick,
I've had an interest in how standards could be built in to ceramics/art
education. A personal opinion is that part of the reason the arts are where
they are, is that we're not generally teaching with values to standards
(flame retardant---there are, I realize exceptions to this generalization).
An interesting model for developing a standards program can be found in the
architecture field. A site that outlines the undergraduate standards can be
found at :
http://www.sarup.uwm.edu/Admissions/accredit4.htm
and subsequent pages. You might find this one interesting. It could
obviously be translated to pottery/ceramics.
Tom Wirt
Clay Coyote Pottery
17614 240th St.
Hutchinson, MN 55350
320-587-2599 fax 320-234-6849
claypot@hutchtel.net
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Tuesday, May 18, 1999 12:17 PM
Subject: Standards for college-level, beginning ceramics instruction
> To those who care about the quality of education in studio art, and
> particularly in ceramics, I would greatly appreciate your responses to the
> questions listed below. I teach at Kirkwood Community College in Cedar
> Rapids, Iowa and have been engaged in a battle with my dean over the issue
of
> teaching loads and content necessary to acceptable, college-level ceramics
> courses, particularly beginning and second level courses. Our teaching
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