Mary Baldwin College

Date: Jul 01 2011
Major: Art & Design Department (This Major's Salary over time)
If you are serious about art, DO NOT ATTEND MARY BALDWIN!!! I was an art major at Mary Baldwin and DECRIED my art courses. (However, I did love my general education courses.) My opinion holds validity because I am not a slacker; MBC gave me a yearly $10,000 scholarship for ALWAYS maintaining above a 3.5.

The Flawed Aspects of Mary Baldwin's art program:

The painting and drawing courses DO NOT HAVE REAL CLASSROOMS because they are in a gymnasium size room with cubicles. While my recent teacher tried to explain methods,oftentimes rock music and hammering from the other cubicles drowned her voice. This teacher admitted that she couldn't even hear her students when they asked questions.

The classes are infiltrated with immature, noisy 14-17 year olds due to the steadily growing PEG program.

There are no standards to grading methods. One teacher just put a random letter grade on art pieces without any explanation.

I have heard that Professor Sconyers (the only photography teacher) doesn't know photoshop too well. I have also heard many people who are serious about photography claim that he comes off too "lax" which is why the program attracts individuals who are lazy and not creative. One girl admitted her high school photography course was more rigorous, and that after attending Mary Baldwin, she never wanted to do photography again.

In the printmaking courses, Professor Sconyers teaches the methods out of order, which is confusing. Also the area is waaayyy too small for the work that has to be done.

Most art courses are only offered once a year. Art courses are only 3 credits but have 6-8 hours of classtime. The aforementioned results in students sometimes having to take two courses simultaneously! Yes, you read right…MBC art faculty expects students to possess Hermione Granger powers.

Many art students are rude and socially inept. When I tried to do photoshop in the art computer lab there was ALWAYS a group of 6-8 girls who ALL had on different music videos and television with the volume turned up. Sometimes the girls would even dance in the lab. In many of my classes, the girls talked loudly while the teacher lectured.

Many of the courses, particularly printmaking and photography, have the aforementioned chaos…even when people are trying to take tests. The crazy thing is that the teacher never discouraged this.

There must be low standards for hiring/keeping staff. One teacher has consistently received bad reviews from ALL of her students and yet she is still a part of the faculty. The past graphic design teacher (not the current one, who is actually good) was so terrible that she gave up halfway through a couple of her lectures and admitted things like,

It's been a while since I used flash.

Plus that past teacher was really mean.

***The senior art project critiques were the most disorganized part of the whole system.

They are at a set time a few times each semester. For me, this time was always when I had another class, which I HAD to skip in order to go to the senior critiques. Unfortunately, there is no rule that this counts as an excused absence, so as a result my attendance grade in that one course suffered.

There are so many art students that each student had less than 10 minutes devoted to her project, which resulted in not enough to no feedback.

Professor Sconyers didn't give me any advice during my year of senior critiques. However, he slammed all of his critiques on me when he graded me at the end of the semester. (I was very upset by this lack of support.)

There was no method to grading senior projects: no written evaluation, or even a verbal explanation of the grade. The grading was based on pure opinion. My poor roommate never discovered her grade until it was posted online because the faculty claimed they needed more time to think about her grade.

Mary Baldwin only offers a B.A. in art as opposed to a B.F.A. which is frankly not enough courses in art to excel to full potential.

I could continue my list. However, I will conclude by declaring that after attending Mary Baldwin College, I no longer have a passion to create art.