Student Learning Assessment

Eight Learning Outcomes are common to all programs at PAFA. By graduation, students are expected to demonstrate the skills and abilities represented by these outcomes.

1. ART MAKING SKILLS AND TECHNIQUE: 

• Students will demonstrate skills and strategies employed within a variety of artistic disciplines.
• Students will demonstrate proficiency within their chosen discipline(s) as well as the use of technology as appropriate to their areas of concentration.

2. CRITICAL THINKING: 

• Students will gather, interpret, evaluate and synthesize information.
• Students will identify their own and society’s intellectual and artistic biases in order to challenge and move beyond binary thinking.
• Students will embrace the process of artmaking, allowing for both success and failure, in the pursuit of lifelong learning.

3. COMMUNICATION: 

• Students will demonstrate an ability to communicate clearly and effectively in a variety of academic and professional modes. 
• Students will be able to identify the most appropriate mode of communication and structure their messages to engage with specific audiences. 

4. PROFESSIONAL SUSTAINABILITY:

• Students will demonstrate the ability to self-direct their professional trajectory and creative lives.
• Students will apply a holistic set of professional skills including financial literacy, strategic planning, and approaches to marketing.

5. GLOBAL CITIZENSHIP:  

• Students will understand themselves as part of a greater whole, with a responsibility to contribute positively to the local and global community.
• Students will make an informed commitment to upholding the values of diversity, equity and inclusion, and working for social and environmental justice.

6. CONTEXT: 

• Students will develop a breadth of knowledge in multiple disciplines that allows them to critically engage with the history of ideas. 
• Students will be able to discuss the many ways in which context creates meaning.
• Students will be able to express how their artmaking responds to and is shaped by historical and contemporary art and ideas.

7. SYNTHESIS: 

• Students will build connections across multiple curricular and co-curricular educational experiences.
• Students will develop independent research and persevere toward the attainment of personal goals.
• Students will demonstrate creativity and the ability to express an individual and informed view of the world and their experience in it.

8. PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT AND SELF-AWARENESS: 

• Students will develop an understanding of their own identity, professional abilities, values, and voice.
• Students will seek and consider feedback from others. 
• Students will demonstrate adaptability, reliability, persistence, and resiliency.