During the first semester of your Senior Year, with support from faculty, you'll craft a detailed proposal for the thesis project that you plan to complete in the second semester of your senior year. Your proposal will include background on your art practice, your research, documentation of the work you have begun making, and a detailed proposal of the project or body of work you plan to create.
During Focus Week, as a first-semester senior you will give a short presentation on your thesis proposal before a panel of faculty for evaluation and approval. Your panelists will evaluate the feasibility and scope of the project as well as its strengths and weaknesses, then discuss them with you to help you make the strongest proposal.
During the second semester of your senior year, you will select a faculty mentor to work closely with as you complete your thesis project and prepare a presentation on the work. All of the resources of the school are available to you to produce this culminating body of work.
During Focus Week as a second-semester senior, you'll install your thesis work and make an Oral Defense of the work. The Oral Defense is a public, formal presentation on the thesis project in front of a panel of faculty. The talk contextualizes and defines your body of work that has been installed in a professional manner. At the end of the presentation, the faculty panelists, and finally, the audience ask questions about your process, ideas, and intentions.
During Focus Week, the 14th week of each semester, we suspend classes and the entire PNCA community—students, faculty, and staff—comes together to support seniors as they present their Thesis Proposals and Projects. In between thesis presentations, the school gathers in the Commons for a communal lunch which might be accompanied by student presentations, special performances, guest lectures, film screenings and more.
Willamette University