College Mission Statement of the Day --- Parsons

Art schools, gotta love them (and especially the women who attend them, they were a weakness for me back in my 20s).

Art school mission statements are also lovely. Parsons is one of the best Art Schools in the country, there mission statement is actually something of a disappointment.

Parsons focuses on creating engaged citizens and outstanding artists, designers, scholars and business leaders through a design-based professional and liberal education.

Parsons students learn to rise to the challenges of living, working and creative decision making in a world where human experience is increasingly designed. The school embraces curricular innovation, pioneering uses of technology, collaborative methods and global perspectives on the future of design.

It's straight forward, succinct, and short. What's up with that? I expected a lot more florid prose wrapped around some crazy ideas about what it means to be an artist in the 21st century. This mission statement leaves me wanting.

Guess I'll have to look at individual departments to find the good stuff.

Here's Lighting Design

The MFA program was the first in the field of architectural lighting, and is the only program focused primarily on design and social practice. An interdisciplinary education is offered in the intellectual, aesthetic, and technical aspects of lighting. At the core of the curriculum is the Lighting Design Studio, where students envision form and space "in light." A technology series complements the studio sequence, as well as courses in the cultural, historical, and perceptual components of lighting. A new dual-degree graduate program combines the MFA in Lighting Design and the M.Arch. The Department's journal, Scapes, focuses on global, metropolitan, and departmental perspectives on architecture. In 2007, AIDL sponsored AFTER TASTE a symposium exploring a symposium exploring new agendas for the study of the interior.

I love the typo with the repetition of symposium, unless it really was a symposium exploring a symposium, which is possible, in which case, even better if it wasn't a typo. And an MFA in Lighting Design? Really? It's important, but I can't see studying that as a main focus, seems like something you can knock off in a couple of quarters as part of your more general education in Architecture.

Here's what they say about Photography

Parsons' BFA in Photography and MFA in Photography educate students about the evolving creative position of the photographer today. Both programs provide a rigorous technical training marked by conceptual and critical thinking about photography's place in the global art and design world. Graduates enter the photographic industry fully prepared to be leaders in a rapidly changing work environment.

What they meant to say, 'you will rule at making photoshopped Bu$hHitler composites for TNR or Salon once we are done with you'.

I could dig around more, but I'll leave the fun of discovery up to you, I can't do all the work, I can only point the way.