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Willamette University

Senior Thesis

The Senior Thesis year is your year of transformation from student to professional artist or designer.

Jax Ko presents her thesis work during Focus Week

Your Thesis Year

A project of your own design.

In your Senior Year, you make the transformation from student to creative professional. During this time, you refine the tools you need to hit the ground running on the day after graduation.

Throughout the year, you gain confidence and a deeper understanding of who you are as an artist while creating lasting bonds with faculty and peers.

The focus of your Senior Year is a thesis project of your own design. Working one on one with a faculty Mentor, and with the support of faculty and your peers, you complete a project or body of work representing your maturity as an artist or designer.

Focus Week is the culmination of this process. You'll install your thesis work in a gallery setting and make a presentation before a panel of faculty and members of the PNCA community.

First Semester

  • Papers on a board with students looking at them

    ​Thesis Project Proposal

    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.

  • Focus Week: Present Thesis Proposal

    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.

    A student presenting their thesis to a full room of people
Joey Ravetti

Second Semester

  • A student working on a computer in a well-lit room

    Complete Thesis Work

    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.

  • Focus Week: Oral Defense of Thesis 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.

    A person standing in front of human scultures, one squatting and one floating in the air.
Focus Week: The Most Exciting Week

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.

Two students participating in focus week at PNCA/

Learning Outcomes

  1. PNCA students will convey complex information and original narratives through written, oral, visual and digital forms that reflect cultural inclusion and clear understanding of convention, form and audience.
  2. PNCA students will analyze their own creative work and that of others, formulate lines of critical inquiry, apply an equitable world-view and multiple ways of knowing  to devise complex solutions using evidence and creative risk-taking.
  3. Students will recognize elements of creative entrepreneurship and arts/design employment models and develop the  knowledge, tools and applied practices necessary for resilient contemporary creative careers.

Willamette University

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