MCAD emphasizes a collaborative process and working with students from all majors. For this Bachelor of Science degree, you will take courses in several different areas, including a core focus, adding up to 120 total credits required for graduation.
Required Courses - These are the core courses that every Creative Entrepreneurship student takes.
Foundation Studies - These classes help you become a well-versed student; they help you build a solid art background.
Electives - Throughout your studies you can choose from numerous studio electives that give you hands-on creative time. These classes round out your experience at MCAD; they deepen your creative practice or fulfill studio and non-studio requirements for a minor.
Humanities and Sciences Electives - These classes round out your experience at MCAD, deepen your creative practice, and fulfill non-studio requirements for a degree.
Learning Outcomes
This course introduces Advertising majors and other interested students to the serious fun of advertising. Students work in creative teams as they would in an agency setting to concept a variety of advertising executions for products and services of all types. Guest speakers from the agency side, media side, and client side discuss the creative process and what’s worked for them.
This course explores the seamless integration of several media into a single campaign, Media covered may include video, print, radio, collateral, retail, packaging, events, and various digital platforms. Students learn how communications vehicles such as packaging, product design, retail, advertising, promotions, PR, and corporate communications can work together in a campaign over time to shape a new or emerging Brand. A real client will participate in person for a semester-long assignment. Guest speakers and mentors will showcase case histories of integrated brand management. Students will work in creative teams with their clients to develop, create, and execute an integrated campaign.
Data permeates our everyday lives, whether we see it or not. This course will help you understand the data in our lives and how to communicate it visually in engaging ways. It covers techniques of designing data visualization and infographics to creatively put data into context. Students develop visual literacy and explore the history, theory, and methods for graphical information presentations. Experience in Adobe Illustrator is helpful.
In the professional world, projects are successfully completed through the efforts of teams by effective leadership, collaboration, planning, innovation, structure, and flexibility. In this course, students experience the processes and approaches that are used while working with a team on real-world client projects such as websites, multimedia presentations, and environmental design. Coaches serve as mentors to guide teams in the project’s process throughout the semester. This course is open to second-year BSc students and BFA students with junior or senior standing. This course must be taken concurrently with BS 3850 Project Tracking.
This course is a study of modern management techniques and systems needed to execute a project from start to finish, to achieve predetermined objectives of scope, quality, time and budgetary cost, to the equal satisfaction of those involved. Relevant speakers, technical readings/discussions, and practical work on concurrent projects underway elsewhere in the curriculum prepare students for responsible and successful project planning and navigation in their careers.
This course covers the nuts and bolts of starting and managing a business from crafting a business concept, to analyzing market demand, to developing a marketing strategy, to establishing a legal entity as well as key elements of financing, budgeting, operating, and growing a business. In a workshop setting, students examine various types of arts- and design-related businesses and the range of issues associated with each as well as key aspects of freelancing, building a business firm, and growing a business operation. Through case studies and hands-on projects, students learn all the elements of a successful business enterprise.
Internships provide an opportunity for students to gain practical experience in a particular career area and valuable on-the-job skills. Internships may be arranged by the Director of Career Development or initiated by students. All internships must be pre-approved through the Career Development Office. For an internship to be approved, a mentor relationship and learning experience should exist beyond a simple employment opportunity. 3-credit internships require working 120 hours at the internship site and keeping a journal of hours and activities.
The science of biology, its methods and its contexts provide insights into the commonalities of patterning in the natural and social worlds. Students will be introduced to organic systems and general systems theory, along with applications of these models in organizations and other social systems. Students learn concepts and approaches to scientific inquiry and taxonomy based on observation and through practical experience.
This course explores the scientific, technological, and social forces that shape society, life, and work.Thinking in systems, students research the existing state of specific topics to develop forecasts for society’s future. The first half of the semester focuses on society while the second half explores framing the individual student’s goals and aspirations.
Human behavior is at the center of all art, design, and business. This interdisciplinary course combines physical, psychological, social, and cultural aspects of the human animal. Students in this course apply this information to find new ways of expression in their personal work. Throughout the second half of the semester, students test this new knowledge by collaborating with clients on real projects, ranging from product design, to communications, to community and environmental wellness.
Paired with the goals of sustainable development, our creative powers can help “meet the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” This course covers a brief history of sustainability through the lens of creativity and visual aesthetics. Students will examine existing sustainability frameworks that seek to balance the social, environmental, and economic goals of the world we live in. The course also looks at current events and terminology related to climate science, social equity, and the circular economy. Students work individually and in teams, using collaborative processes to find sustainable solutions for individuals, citizens, and consumers.
This course is designed to help students enhance their creativity as they apply it to their own areas of visual communication and/or entrepreneurial studies. Various problem-solving techniques are examined. Topics explored include creativity (what it is, what enhances it, what can inhibit it), how to confront the creative void and take the next step, creativity and time, creatively working with others, and contrasts and complementary aspects of the creative vs. critical mind (how they can be made to work together).
Leadership and professional development are essential to creating and running teams, working with clients, and managing elements of creative projects or businesses. This course introduces students to methods of self-discovery that inform attentive and collaborative leaders. Students examine methods of leadership used for working on creative projects and investigate how the understanding of team dynamics and change management can be used to foster a productive team in a creative work environment.
This course assists juniors and seniors in preparing for and finding their careers. Students explore techniques to land their dream job, develop creative resumes, create and update professional portfolios, and gain experience networking in order to broaden connections from which to get a job. Students explore processes around personal branding, social media best practices, marketing their unique skills, and talking about what they do. This course is for students who are concentrating on finding a job with an organization as well as those who are creating their own job in the creative economy.
Creative entrepreneurship can be a solo or team effort, and this course is designed as a capstone experience to allow students to showcase their entrepreneurial skill set, either as solopreneurs or with a team project. Students will conduct targeted research and work on an entrepreneurial project or business concept from start to finish during a semester-long experiential learning setting guided by an instructor. They will present the findings of their work to a public audience. This course can be taken as a standalone or concurrently with ES 4701. Prerequisite: BS or BFA junior or senior status or approval of instructor.
Choose and declare a design, fine arts, or media arts track. 9 credits required. See Student Affairs or Records for more information.
Foundation: Drawing 1 is an introductory drawing course designed to prepare students for study in all majors of the college. Students develop basic drawing skills, including the ability to perceive and express visual relationships, organize a two-dimensional composition, and depict and manipulate form, space, and light. Students work from direct observation of still life, interior space, and landscape.
Foundation: 2D is an introduction to creative thinking that develops students’ skills in research, observation, interpretation, and self-expression. An emphasis is placed on exploring new ways to read and see the world, as well as new ways to report on it. Students learn basic two-dimensional principles through the use of various media, tools, materials, and processes. As a result, students develop a visual and verbal language for analyzing, organizing, shaping, and communicating two-dimensional form and meaning.
Students are introduced to digital resources at MCAD while exploring digital media. Areas covered include the Service Bureau, Gray Studio, and Media Center, along with other digital resources. Students use a variety of software and hardware to learn the basics of working with recorded media, including video, sound, and photography, as well as developing critical language for discussing media and media artists.
This course serves as an introduction to an interdisciplinary mode of working within media arts. Students will learn technical skills in lens-based practices such as filmmaking and photography, basic audio recording, and coding-based creative practices. Students will engage with editing and production tools, and create artworks engaged in observation, critical analysis, and conceptual thinking. Projects will engage the materiality unique to each media. Emphasis is placed on techniques that cross and combine media to create rich experiences and artworks.
Students in the Bachelor of Science program take 3 studio electives of their choice.
Key to the creative and critical growth of the engaged, successful artist is participation in a culture of writing and inquiry. Students in this course focus on the kinds of writing they will encounter and produce in their coursework at MCAD and as creative professionals. Regular writing workshops allow students to concentrate on experiential and practical approaches to writing. Students explore a variety of texts and objects through class assignments, and then develop clear compelling essays employing a variety of rhetorical and narrative strategies.
This course combines basic economic principles with tools from the discipline of urban and regional economics. It focuses on ways in which artists and designers contribute to the prosperity of their city, and shows how their work can contribute to the economic success of potential employers, customers, or clients.
Creativity inspires innovative problem solving. This course explores the conditions of innovation and examines technological advances and the social and cultural conditions needed for innovations to be adopted. Students ideate innovations to solve problems large and small while considering social and environmental impacts. Students’ projects demonstrate the power of innovative thinking and its application to create change.
We are surrounded by data. In nature, we can see inherent rhythms that can be appreciated numerically. We all use data literacy throughout our daily lives and to understand creative practice. This course uncovers the process of gathering and analyzing data from known sample sets such as websites, market research, government agencies, and more. Students will explore the theory of analytics, identify data sources, and practice the methods of visualizing data in various contexts, including applications in communications, marketing, and as applied in creative practice. This course fulfills a Liberal Arts – Scientific and Quantitative Reasoning or Liberal Arts elective requirement for BFA students.
Funding creative ventures requires developing proposals that are clearly, concisely, and persuasively written. This course covers the essential skills needed for effective proposal writing in creative and commercial settings. Students concept, write, and revise project proposals using grant templates, crowdfunding platforms, and proposal documents as references. Through case studies, students examine various funding channels, then develop project proposals with matching budget projections that are delivered through writing and presentations.
This course explores the power of the spoken word. Students integrate the voice with visual communication utilized on social media platforms, the internet, TV, radio, and so forth, and attend recording studio sessions with professional voiceover talent. Students write various pieces for the voice and attain the skills necessary to develop any audio broadcast assignment from concept stage through final air-quality production without supervision.
Theses courses are intended for students to deepen creative practice, fulfill studio and non-studio requirements for a minor. Students may elect up to 18 credits of studio or non-studio electives and/or up to 6 credits in internships in the area.