This is the preliminary (or launch) version of the 2024-2025 VCU Bulletin. We may add courses that expose our students to cutting-edge content and transformative learning. We may also add content to the general education program that focuses on racial literacy and a racial literacy graduation requirement, and may receive notification of additional program approvals after the launch. The final edition and full PDF version will include these updates and will be available in August prior to the beginning of the fall semester.

The Department of Sculpture and Extended Media is a heterogeneous group of students and artists/teachers. Together, we examine the fundamental, philosophical, critical, technical, and historical components of art. We do so with an eye toward developing and advancing the discipline of sculpture in its broadest and most inclusive terms within an atmosphere of mutual respect.

Our charge is to create an environment of speculation and high expectation regarding self-motivation, intellectual capacity, and responsibility in order to establish conditions that promote student’s ability to construct a thinking self. It is to explore and grow with technology's parameters in the process of discovering applications to new modes of expression. It is to stress the links between art, science, the humanities, emerging philosophies and the conditions of an ever-changing world. And it is to provide students with tools of discernment, vocabulary, and the skills of analysis and synthesis to become participants in the critical dialogues of our age.

Within this context, students strive to measure up to the best performances modeled for them by history, by their peers and by faculty engaged in vital research.

Student learning outcomes

Upon completing this program, students will know and know how to do the following:

  • Students will demonstrate technical proficiency in the use of tools and materials.
  • Students will understand the scope of practice of historic and contemporary sculpture.
  • Students will apply critical thinking and conceptual problem-solving in their studio work.
  • Students will demonstrate professional presentation of creative work visually and verbally.