Pedagogy in Liberal Arts Colleges – Ronald’s Response pt.1 by Discreet 3D Studio

So not too long ago, Hann asked me about what an architectural pedagogy in liberal arts colleges are like, and I think ECT also pressed me further for an answer. So I shan’t procrastinate further. Except that, I’m not too sure how to describe it in a palatable manner. There are too many angles to take. So this initial post shall be a more general run-down of the Studio Art program. I’ll dwell into the architecture side of it in part 2.

(I know you’re all interested in the architecture side of things, but I need to explain this first before I go into the architecture. So bear with me)

It’s a slightly tricky question for me to answer because Wesleyan’s programme isn’t representative of most liberal arts colleges. And secondly, because a fair bit of my architectural growth took place during my 3rd year away on Columbia’s New York/Paris: Shape of Two Cities programme. (which itself, deserves another entry) To be fair to the question, and to be fair to Wesleyan, I will only focus on Wesleyan.

Most of you probably know that liberal arts education is broad based, meaning that one has to cover a broad range of subjects that fall loosely into three categories: i) the arts and humanities, ii) the social sciences, iii) and the natural sciences and mathematics. My courseload for modules related to my major only accounted for about 30-40% of all that I studied in college. So what I got to study outside art/architecture accounted for a large part of my education. So there are two parts to this equation, i) what I studied within my major, and ii) what I studied outside my major (Maybe I’ll dwell into that in yet another part.)