ACM Chicago Programs: Chicago Arts

  United States

• Other Cities in United States: 
Chicago

Term: Fall, Spring 

Description: The ACM Chicago Programs offer three thematic tracks: Business, Entrepreneurship, & Society, Chicago Arts, and Urban Studies. Using the programs' distinctive interdisciplinary approach, participants tackle the big issues facing cities and the people who live and work in them. Then students dig deeper to relate those issues to their lives, education, and career aspirations. The ACM Chicago Programs give students a solid grounding - knowledge, resources, and connections - and the flexibility to follow their passions, in this dynamic city.

For students in the Chicago Arts program, Chicago may be the best urban environment in America today for young artists to discover their voices. The city boasts a thriving tradition of "do-it-yourself" art, and Chicago audiences expect more edgy, experimental, and relevant gallery showings, performances, and readings. The result is an artistic landscape filled with alternative music venues, neighborhood art galleries, and hole-in-the-wall theatre companies.

At the same time, the city supports world-class traditional arts institutions, such as the Art Institute, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, and many others. With its multidisciplinary courses and blend of independent and collaborative work, Chicago Arts is a full immersion into the Chicago cultural adventure. Students are challenged to explore the creative process with the support of a community of peers, teachers, and working artists.

The Chicago Programs are focused on learning and living as citizens of the city. You won't just talk about the city, you'll be in it: interacting with art and artists, doing business, learning a neighborhood. You won't just read about it, you'll be participating in it: sampling the cultural riches, pursuing an internship, and meeting the people who make this city work.

The Chicago Programs are uniquely centered on academic rigor and personal engagement. All three programs include a city-centered Core Course and a choice of academically demanding Seminars. But each program also asks you to do independent work in your field and to complete an internship that will connect your academic focus to the world of work.

All of this takes place in a dynamic city that has, from its founding, been built on connections and innovation. At the center of the country, Chicago has always been a hub of communication, transportation, and commerce. Through the years, Chicago has continued to produce leaders in areas across the spectrum-- in architecture, social services, global business, and the arts.

Highlights: The Chicago Programs' curriculum is designed to maximize your Chicago experience to best enable you to become a knowledgeable, creative, and socially aware citizen. Program faculty and staff will provide you with a framework, as well as academic and experiential tools to help you think critically and contextualize contemporary urban issues.

There are four key components to the Chicago Programs:

[1] Core course - All students enroll in the interdisciplinary Core Course that introduces the concepts of place and identity in Chicago. The three program tracks will integrate thematically by exploring how the arts, business, and socio-political issues intertwine. This course intentionally views the city through three lenses, asking important questions that cross disciplinary boundaries. Guest speakers from around the city will spark discussions and reflections. Common readings and projects will prompt conversation, creativity, research, and exploration. Most importantly, Core Course will engage students with the the city as they meet the people who are making its art, defining its culture, confronting its problems, and reshaping its business. Through the experience, students will contextualize the Chicago they live, study and work in for the semester within its rich and complex history, while imagining how the city's identity might continue to evolve.

[2] Seminar - Students in each track of the Chicago Programs will typically have a seminar course that focuses on particular issues of the city from the perspective of their discipline. The seminar combines a strong academic emphasis, including key readings and significant writing experiences, with field trips and sessions with Chicago experts. Seminars and field trips are led by program faculty members and invited speakers. As both participant and observer, students will reflect upon and analyze these experiences through scholarly and creative individual projects. Seminar topics change from term to term.

[3] Internship - The internship provides students with practical, professional experience with an organization that specializes in an area of work related to their personal interests and academic goals. Over the years, students have been placed in hundreds of internships across a broad spectrum of social welfare, not-for-profit, educational, activist, community, arts, and business organizations. Through the internships, students learn how the city works, and how their own efforts contribute to the organizations in which they work and society as a whole. For a total of at least 150 hours over the semester, students work alongside of and are supervised by professionals to gain valuable work skills. Discussion groups and writing assignments facilitated by the program faculty help students contextualize and reflect upon these experiences as they consider their own future careers.

[4] Independent Study Project - All students in the Chicago Programs pursue Independent Research Projects (ISP) related to their academic and professional goals that draw on the city's resources to create something original: e.g., a work of art, a research paper, a service project, or a business prospectus.

Degree Level: Bachelors Degree (Undergraduate)

Cost in US$: Inquire for more information

Experience Required: no

This Program is open to Worldwide Participants.

Typically Participants Work Independently or in Groups of 25

Application Process Involves:

• Letters of Reference
• Online Application plus Application Assessment
• Transcript
• Written Application

Post-Program Services Include:

• Exit Debriefing Abroad
• Alumni Network
• Job and Internship Network

ACM - Associated Colleges of the Midwest's Mission Statement: The Associated Colleges of the Midwest, a consortium of residential liberal arts colleges, aims to strengthen its member colleges as leaders, and exemplars, in liberal arts education through significant, innovative, and sustainable collaborations. One key component of ACM is to provide exemplary liberal arts learning through a wide variety of off-campus study programs. Almost all of ACM's off-campus study programs around the world are open to students from any college or university.

Year Founded: 1958