High Impact Practices Utilized in this Program:

Collaborative Assignments and Projects

Collaborative learning combines two key goals: learning to work and solve problems in the company of others, and sharpening one’s own understanding by listening seriously to the insights of others, especially those with different backgrounds and life experiences. Approaches range from study groups within a course, to team-based assignments and writing, to cooperative projects and research.

Service Learning, Community-Based Learning

In these programs, field-based “experiential learning” with community partners is an instructional strategy—and often a required part of the course. The idea is to give students direct experience with issues they are studying and with ongoing efforts to analyze and solve problems in the community. A key element in these programs is the opportunity to both apply learning in real-world settings and reflect in a classroom setting on service experiences. These programs model that giving back to the community is an important college outcome and that working with community partners is good preparation for citizenship, work, and life.

Internships and Field Placements Internships

are another increasingly common form of experiential learning. The idea is to provide students with direct experience in a work setting—usually related to their career interests—and to give them the benefit of supervision and coaching from professionals in the field. If the internship is taken for course credit, students complete a project or paper that is approved by a faculty member.

Capstone Courses and Projects

Whether called “senior capstones” or some other name, these culminating experiences require students nearing the end of their college years to create a project of some sort that integrates and applies what they’ve learned. Capstones are offered both in departmental programs and, increasingly, in general education as well.

High-Impact Educational Practices Excerpt from High-Impact Educational Practices: What They Are, Who Has Access to Them, and Why They Matter, by George D. Kuh (AAC&U, 2008)

TAG Team is the UWF Department of Art & Design’s Graphic Design Experiential Learning and Professional Development Program in Exhibition Graphics. TAG Team in named for TAG, The Art Gallery at the University of West Florida, as the TAG Team program started as a two-student internship in collaboration with then TAG Director Amy Bowman-McElhone. Over the past twelve years I have worked to develop and expand the internship into a high-impact experiential learning & professional development program in museum graphics. I have done so in collaboration with Amy Bowman-McElhone in her positions as Director of TAG The Art Gallery at UWF and then Director of the Pensacola Museum of Art; Nick Croghan in his positions as Director of TAG The Art Gallery at UWF and the Director of the Pensacola Museum of Art; Jerre Brisky, Director of the UWF Center of Fine and Performing Arts; and Richard Rodriguez, Exhibition Designer for the UWF Historic Trust. Five grants, thirty classes, and twelve years later TAG Team is now a three-class sequence including GRA4873C Exhibition Design Studio and GRA 4940L Internship in Graphic Design with eight students per year and a downtown design lab in the UWF Museum of History.

Designers in TAG Team work under the mentorship of the Graphic Design Faculty with the directors of the UWF Center for Fine and Performing Arts and the UWF Historic Trust Museums, including the Pensacola Museum of Art as well at the Historic Trust Exhibition Designer to create full exhibition design packages including: exhibition logotypes and identities; title walls; wayfinding and signage; advertising collateral including posters, postcards, banners and billboards, and catalogues and brochures used by these organizations to market to the general public. In TAG Team, student designers respond to each individual museum’s specific mission and design identity to produce real world event graphics, event collateral, exhibit design components, and designs for the various events at the UWF CFPA and museums of the UWF Historic Trust.

Each year, TAG Team designers collaborate to produce the following real world projects for the university and their now professional portfolios:

Exhibition Identity and Collateral Packages for for six exhibitions at TAG including the Foundations Exhibition, TAGGED, the Student Art and Design Exhibition, and the BFA Graduation Exhibition. The list includes the UWF Faculty Biennial every other year and the Irish Experience exhibition with pandemics permit travel.
The calendar brochure for the UWF Center of Fine and Performing Arts and the calendar banners for TAG
Six poster series for the UWF Department of Music including the Music Hall Artist Series, the Jazz Ensemble performance series, the Runge Strings performance series, the UWF Singers performance series, the UWF Symphonic Band performance series, and the UWF Percussion Ensemble performance series
Posters for each of the UWF Department of Theater’s productions scaled for poster printing, digital billboards, and bus stop inserts
Exhibition Identities for two exhibitions at the Pensacola Museum of Art including Youth Art Focus and the Members Show as well as the STEAM Triennial every third year
Layout and cover design for the Troubadour Art & Literary Magazine in collaboration with students for the UWF Department of English
Cover design for publications from UWF English Department published Panhandler Press

The success of this program is difficult to quantify. Our most successful students are one that endure this rigorous yet nurturing experience. Anecdotally, the majority of our most successful graduates credit the close mentorship, the real-world graphics experiences, and the experience of interacting with and working for several arts related directors and professionals with their success after graduation. The eventual creation, through grants that I wrote for equipment and collaboration with the UWF Historic Trust, lead to downtown a design lab for the team to meet with said directors and both build and critique work. This added professional location adds even more confidence and eventual polish to the students’ presentation and interaction skillset. Examples of the experience pictured below:

Art of Design exhibition displaying ten years of work from the TAG Team

Work featured in the second quinquennial exhibition includes graphics for TAG, The Art Gallery at the University of West Florida and the Pensacola Museum of Art

TAG The Art Gallery

SYNTHESIS

Exhibition Identity Packages for the Senior Graduation Exhibition

UWF Department of Music

JAZZ ENSEMBLE

Poster Series

UWF Department of Theater

POSTERS

Right: Critique with CFPA Director Jerre Briske

Weeding Workshop

TAG Team Designers work with UWF Historic Trust Exhibition Designer Richard Rodriguez to learn designing for vinyl title walls, using the large format vinyl cutter, weeding the vinyl, and applying the design to the wall