It's true! No majors!
SMFA has no studio foundation year requirement, no grades for studio courses, and no requirement to pick a major. All in all, we do things a little differently around here. Our interdisciplinary studio programs are driven by access and choice.
At SMFA, you'll be encouraged to build a broad range of transferrable skills and have the option to focus in on what interests you, whether that's one area or many mediums. You'll collaborate with your advisors and faculty to design your own course of study that evolves to meet your developing goals and ambitions, offering a customized set of powerfully flexible professional skills. You’ll be part of a diverse cohort of students, each pursuing your own pathway—a perfect setting for collaboration. Interdisciplinary access stretches beyond the studio, too, since you'll have access to coursework in all of Tufts' 150+ majors, minors, and programs, allowing you to build unique academic combinations tailored to your goals for the future.
We'll give you an example of how our unique, interdisciplinary curriculum leads to excellent post-graduate employment outcomes:
This is Tori Baisden, BFA '17. While Tori was at SMFA, she did everything — bookmaking, printmaking, textile design, photography, performance, jewelry, sculpture, installation — she designed bomber jackets about body positivity, and posters about intersectional feminist icons. She launched an art and criticism magazine along with several of her classmates, and she was commissioned to design the graduate thesis catalog for our school. She interned with a NYC fashion company, and her senior thesis project was a crazy, sprawling, immersive installation slash feminist gameshow.
So, what did she do with all of that after graduating?
A LOT!
Here’s one of her post-grad projects:
That’s one of the Museum of Ice Cream locations. The MOIC is a wildly successful series of pop-up experiences with locations in NYC, Miami, and San Francisco. Tori was hired as one of its designers. Her contributions included illustrations, signage, wallpaper, packaging designs, branding, and the conceptualization and execution of an installation consisting of a cascading wall of popsicles!
In a competitive job market, companies (especially innovative ones like the MOIC) look for more than just a diploma with the words "Bachelor of Fine Arts," a list of Adobe programs candidates can use, or a list of classes they’ve taken. The MOIC was looking for someone who could take an idea and actualize it through a network of interrelated skill-sets. They needed someone who could be flexible and self-driven – assembling a toolbox of appropriate tools that bridge such diverse disciplines as product design, illustration, sculpture, installation, photography, etc.
They were looking for someone who wasn’t just able to follow directions, but who could make things that hadn’t been made before.
These are the kinds of artists we train at SMFA. By not requiring our students to follow one inflexible pathway, we encourage them to make work driven by their own passions, to assemble skills appropriate to their individual pathways, and to learn how to assemble the right toolbox for any job – even as new jobs are invented! We embrace our students interests and motivations and guide them in exploring through a number of mediums and approaches in order to build a deep and unique set of skills.
Tori's journey catapulted her from the Museum of Ice Cream into a role at a major New York design firm, where she climbed to Partner & Creative Director. From there, she set out on her own entrepreneurial adventure as the Co-Founder & Creative Director of DoBAD (Department of Branding and Design). Congrats, Tori!