WCore Creativity and Performance Courses
ART-106: Drawing, Inquiry, and Expression
This course introduces students to the art of drawing and visual communication. It covers fundamental techniques, materials, vocabulary, and modes of communication inherent to the medium. Students will also learn basic terms and techniques pertaining to creation and critique of drawings, and the presentation and storage of finished artworks. This course will also challenge students to hone their visual literacy, encouraging them to analyze and understand works of art through both historical and contemporary lenses. (WCore: WCFAH, WCCAP)
ART-111: Paint, Perception, and Alchemy
This course introduces students to the art of painting and visual communication. It covers fundamental techniques, materials, vocabulary, and modes of communication inherent to the medium. Students will also learn basic terms and techniques pertaining to creation and critique of painting, and the presentation and storage of finished artworks. This course will also challenge students to hone their visual literacy, encouraging them to analyze and understand works of art through both historical and contemporary lenses. (WCore: WCFAH, WCCAP)
ART-128: Maker's Lab
We live in a designed world. Our lived experience is the result of decisions made in the creative process, and says as much about aesthetics as it does about effective design. This class engages students in discussions, written responses, hands-on studio workshops, and innovative problem-solving as a way to consider the aesthetics and design in our world. Using fundamental concepts from drawing and painting, sculpture and 3D construction, digital tools, and design, we will apply design-based thinking to solve problems, revise and evaluate existing solutions, and personally redefine the creative process. Work across several disciplines will allow us to see the interconnection and relationships between traditionally disparate fields of study. Simultaneously, this course will provide students the opportunity to expand and integrate their creative skills, gain experience with specialized technology, and develop a portfolio of interdisciplinary objects and ideas that demonstrates creative flexibility and a multifaceted understanding of complex issues. Alongside individual projects, we will identify and analyze real world problems, as a way to connect what we do in the classroom to our community. (WCore: WCFAH, CE, WCCAP)
ART-148: Ceramics I: Material Studies
This course introduces students to the fundamental nature, practices, techniques, and culture of working in clay. Students will receive an introduction into the four basic building techniques of ceramics. It is a course that will familiarize the student with a utilitarian and artistic material that has been used for millennia and continues to be found useful in new technological and industrial manners. Students will be given an understanding of the practice of time management, a key component to the success of working in clay and a necessity in daily life. Students will learn ceramic hand-building, pottery, glazing, and firing methods as a means of self-expression and communication. (WCore: WCFAH, WCCAP)
ART-180: Photography
Photography is the visual language of our time. With the introduction of contemporary technology, vision itself has become our most immediate form of communication and expression. Although we will look at and discuss the work of others, this course is primarily about each student making her/his own personal images. In this course, students will learn basic technical skills for the beginning photographer. These include camera operation, developing and scanning black and white film, basic grayscale digital image processing, making prints from negatives, making inkjet prints and presentation. Students will also learn the grammar of this language; use of the frame, time, vantage, and detail. Students will investigate the relationship of form to content. Most importantly, students will use these skills to explore their own vision and ideas. Through discussions and group critiques, they will share this work with each other and receive feedback to help them refine it. They will produce affective images that examine their personal perception and concepts. (WCore: WCFAH, WCCAP)
ART-210: Traditional Photography
More photographs are uploaded to Facebook every two minutes than were made during the first 60 years of the history of photography. With the shift to digital technology and the convenience it affords, electronic photography has replaced traditional, silver-based photography as our mainstream method of visual expression and communication. Traditional photography, however, continues to be practiced with a strong and passionate following. Most serious photographers consider it necessary to learn these skills to truly understand the medium, and many practice it for its immediacy and hands-on intimacy. This course will introduce skills, techniques, and materials of traditional, silver-based black and white photography. These skills include use of camera types, including view cameras and hand-held cameras, lenses, light metering techniques, lighting techniques, and refined development and traditional printing techniques. We will examine how different technologies have introduced different methods, and how these methods have shaped, and been shaped by, cultural aesthetics and priorities. We will discuss and examine artistic and photographic concerns, and deal with the advancement of personal visual and conceptual skills needed to produce affective images. Students in this course will experiment with a variety of materials, techniques, and philosophical approaches to traditional photography, and ultimately produce a body of work that exhibits their own personal investigations and creative expression. (WCore: WCFAH, CE, WCCAP)
CMPT-140: App Creators: Designing for Impact & Fun
Bring your ideas to life by building mobile apps that make a difference! This course is designed for beginners and teaches students practical coding skills through fun, real-world projects that show how easy and rewarding tech can be. (WCore: WCSAM, CE, WCCAP)
DANCE-115: Digital Dances Social Media & Creativity
Have you ever slayed a TikTok challenge, followed a YouTube tutorial to learn a new move or wondered what happened to Dubsmash? This course will look for answers while it explores the dance and social media as a space of creative expression, technical innovation and cultural exchange. Students will examine how social media platforms shape the aesthetics, consumption and reception of dance, while engaging in hands-on creative projects to develop individual movement-based social media content. Through creative exercises, practical work, critical discussions and collaborative experiments, students will explore what it means to create, connect, move and communicate in a digitally mediated world. (WCore: CE, WCCAP)
LATN-110: Latin I
This course focuses on Latin grammar, syntax and pronunciation, on Roman art forms that retained popularity through the Middle Ages, and on the joys of knowing even a little Latin. Through readings and enriching activities, you will see how you can use your Latin in our contemporary world. (WCore: WCFAH, CE, WCCAP)
LMW-130: Self-Discovery: Film and Literature
Great films and literature testify to the difficulty and the crucial importance of self-discovery. Literary and cinematic protagonists throughout history have struggled to "know thyself," as the oracle commands. The failure to know oneself can have tragic consequences. For us today, film and literature are a challenging and enjoyable route to self-knowledge. This class will study works of literature and cinema which speak to the process of self-discovery. (WCore: WCFAH, CE, WCCAP)
LMW-230: Introduction to Creative Writing
Students learn the building blocks of creative writing--including diction, figurative language, narrative, imagery, point of view, meter, and form--by reading and analyzing contemporary literature, writing in response to weekly prompts, and meeting visiting writers. This workshop course is designed to expand the students' repertoire of literary technique through reading, experimentation, feedback, and revision. Strongly recommended as a prerequisite to other creative writing courses. (WCore: CE, WCCAP)
MUSC-132: Sound, Music, and Technology
"The history of the music industry is inevitably also the story of the development of technology. From the player piano to the vinyl disc, from reel-to-reel tape to the cassette, from the CD to the digital download, these formats and devices changed not only the way music was consumed, but the very way artists created it." Edgar Bronfman, Jr. former CEO of Warner Music Group Using this quote as a guide, but expanding it to include music and sound as a whole, not just the music industry, this course will broadly examine the effect that technology has had on music and sound after WWII. It will cover music and sound in popular music, art music, film and interactive media, music of other cultures, and sound art and sound installations. The class format is based on a cycle of listening, reading, and creating. Students will first listen to and discuss works that employ, are made possible, or were fundamentally changed because of a paradigm shift brought about due to a technological innovation. Students will then read and learn about one particular innovation and finally demonstrate their knowledge of this innovation by creating short musical or sound works of their own and writing about the relationship between technology and their own work or by composing short, focused essays about the relationship between a technological shift and works listened to in class. This class is open to all majors, regardless of prior musical knowledge; however, basic computer skills are required. (WCore: WCFAH, WCCAP)
PUBH-105: Public Health & History of Advertising
This course examines how advertising has influenced public health over time, from promoting harmful products like tobacco to driving health campaigns on issues like disease prevention and mental health. Students with analyze historical and modern advertisements, explore their societal impacts and evaluate how marketing can be used to promote health outcomes. Ideal for those interested in public health, marketing or media studies. (WCore: CE, WCCAP)
SOC-210: Meow Or Never Supporting Cats in Society
This cat-centered course is designed to explore creative ways that members of the cat community come together to celebrate and care for cats! We begin by exploring recent work by cat behaviorists, cat design experts and cat rescuers. Over the last decade, this community has completely transformed the ways we care for cats, both those in our homes and in the larger community. As part of this class, we will learn more about supporting community cats and we will design and create in our own service projects to benefit the community cats here in Salt Lake City. (WCore: WCSBS, CE, WCCAP)
THTR-101: Experimental Theatre: Creative Ensemble
This class veers from linear storytelling and incorporates the various ways story can be communicated through movement, music, text, and mise en scène. The ensemble creates original work that is generated through improvisation, Viewpoints, Moment Work, Neo-Futurists, The Rabble, Rimini Protokall and the Living Newspaper. (WCore: CE, WCCAP)