Engineering in the Arts
Because midterms in The School of Engineering begin after week 2, I practically live in the bleak, two-floor building that is Heafey, surrounded by the bustling students and squeaky whiteboards I love.
Design by Diego Acevedo
Heafey is home to the engineers, and Dowd, on the other side of campus, is home to the studio artists. Both buildings play a significant role on campus, yet the departments barely overlap. As an engineering student, I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve been to Dowd.
“Heafey felt more like the engineer’s ground,” explains Brianna Roberto, a senior Studio Arts and Child Studies double major. “There was a different energy so I didn’t feel as comfortable studying in SCDI or Heafey in the STEM-centered crowd. Dowd is more diverse in terms of who hangs out around the building, and I feel a lot more at peace.”
Just as Heafey and Dowd seem physically worlds apart, the polarization of the two departments is even more drastic. Part of the polarization lies in the omission of an art requirement in the engineering curriculum. While we engineers enjoy making robots, and studio art majors enjoy making pottery and paintings, this doesn’t mean our interests are mutually exclusive.
Engineering students do have an arts requirement. However, it is met through ENGL 181, an advanced writing course specifically for engineers in preparation for their senior design–a year-long project akin to a capstone project.
But, the “arts” in the advanced writing course is creating slides or supplementary visual aids to presentations–a far cry from the actual art classes offered at Santa Clara.
I can already hear the complaints: art classes aren’t for everyone, I don’t want to take another four units on top of the 189 units I’m already taking as an engineering major and so forth.
There’s more to art classes than the stereotypical painting and drawing–there’s photography, computer graphics, ceramics, filmmaking, dance, writing and more.
But, we engineers live in a bubble and have been almost severed from the rest of the departments, which is a major issue. This is the perfect time to explore classes that you would otherwise not have the opportunity to take in a crammed engineering course load.
Having an arts requirement bundled into our classes is both helpful and limiting–helpful in that we aren’t forced to add another class to our already full schedules, but limiting in that we aren’t exposed to the more creative side of campus.
“The art curriculum definitely allowed me to discover new things–discover new mediums that I really liked,” Roberto said. “And that wouldn’t have been possible if I wasn’t given that little push.”
The pros of taking an art class outweigh the cons, so having it incorporated into our curriculum must be beneficial. And, who knows? You might really enjoy it.
A lot of our engineering majors are already creative–from the precise drawings of circuits to the design of systems. So, this technical creativity translates well to art classes while expanding our horizons of what art really is.
“I definitely always do my best to encourage other people to take art classes,” Roberto said. “Because I just love the people, the students and the professors.”