Prerequisite Waivers & Course Substitutions

If you are interested in waiving out of a Roski School of Art and Design prerequisite* course, you have come to the right place. Read on to learn more about competency based prerequisite waivers and course substitutions.

Students who wish to directly enroll in an intermediate or advanced Roski course must submit a portfolio to demonstrate competency equivalent to that which students develop via the required prerequisite course(s) that Roski offers. Faculty review portfolios to determine whether or not submitted work demonstrates mastery of certain key concepts and techniques within the media of interest.

Faculty approval of a portfolio only waives a student out of a prerequisite course; such approval does not waive a Roski major or minor out of the required number of Roski units. For example, on the strength of a portfolio alone, a student may be waived out of ART 140: Sculpture Iand into ART 340: Sculpture II, but the student is not waived out of the 4 units of major or minor requirements that ART 140 would normally satisfy.

Portfolio submission and approval —-> Prerequisite lifted for intermediate or advanced Roski course. No Roski unit credit given.

To be waived out of a required Roski units, a student must submit a portfolio and a syllabus or syllabi of completed college-level coursework equivalent to the course in question. Faculty review a student’s prior syllabus or syllabi to determine whether or not prior college-level coursework sufficiently taught key concepts and techniques within the media of interest.

For example, on the strength of a portfolio, a student may be waived out of ART 140: Sculpture Iand into ART 340: Sculpture II. If the student also successfully completed a college-level course equivalent to ART 140 in the past, they should submit a syllabus for the equivalent course to receive units of credit to be counted toward their Roski requirements.

Portfolio submission and approval + syllabus or syllabi submission and approval —-> Prerequisite lifted for intermediate or advanced Roski course + student is awarded credit for required Roski units.

In order to have your relevant artwork reviewed, please complete the online form for the appropriate course(s) listed below. You will be asked to upload specific examples of your art work as well as the syllabi from previous courses, if appropriate. JPG files are encouraged in order to keep the total portfolio size to less than 20 megabytes. No PDF files please.

Portfolio reviews may take a couple weeks. As such, waiting too long to submit a request for review can be an issue. A request should be submitted long before the first week of classes. If you experience any technical problems, please let us know immediately by contacting your advisor (see below for contact information). You may submit portfolios only one time for each area of art. Portfolios for course waivers must be submitted within one semester of enrolling as an art major.

*All of the above that pertains to prerequisite waivers also applies to corequisite waiver. DES 203, for example, serves as a corequisite for DES 202.

• ART 110: Drawing for Art and Design | sample ART 110 syllabus

• ART 120: Painting I | sample ART 120 syllabus

• ART 130: Ceramics | sample ART 130 syllabus

• ART 131: Wheel Throwing | sample ART 131 syllabus

• ART 140: Sculpture I | sample ART 140 syllabus

• ART 255: B&W Film and Darkroom | sample ART 255 syllabus

• ART 150: Introduction to Photography | sample ART 150 syllabus

• ART 350: Intermediate Photography | sample ART 350 syllabus

• CRIT 150gp: Histories of Art, Design and Visual Culture | sample CRIT 150 syllabus

• CRIT 160g: Critical Theory in Art, Design and Visual Culture | sample CRIT 160 syllabus

• DES 102: Design Fundamentals | sample DES 102 syllabus

• DES 203: Digital Tools for Design | sample DES 203 syllabus