Bachelor of Science in Astronomy

at Shorelight Group - University of Kansas USA

Visual Communication Designers shape the information that everybody sees, uses and experiences. The Visual Communication Design program at KU prepares students for current professional demands and provides students with the fundamental design thinking, making, and process skills required to build a rewarding career and facilitate life-long learning.

Visual Communication Design students learn to combine communication and technology with design and business to create powerful visual solutions. Students become adept in analyzing communication problems and inventing beautiful and appropriate solutions that respond to human needs and improve the quality of business, government and everyday life. Course content deals with a variety of visual communication design problems related to the community, society, industry, commerce, and advertising. Attention is given to the development of a well-rounded, representative, and quality portfolio. Check out a selection of student work.

Career options for visual communication designers include a wide range of areas such as traditional print media, magazine and book design, corporate marketing communications, branding, packaging design, exhibition and environmental design, motion graphic design, website design, interface design and more.

In the Department of Visual Art, you get the best of both worlds. You will work side by side with world-class, practicing artists. Small classes provide time for directed and individual instruction and space for developing big ideas. You can explore all seven studio areas to create an education as individual as you are.

The Bachelor of Arts in Visual Art is a four-year, 120 credit hour degree program. The B.A. in Visual Art is a more traditional liberal arts undergraduate degree, requiring only 24 credit hours in Visual Art beyond the Foundations, as opposed to the 49 required by the more art intensive B.F.A. Because of this, students interested in pursuing a double major may find it easier to pair the B.A. with other more traditional undergraduate degrees. Popular double majors in Visual Art include: Visual Art/Psychology; Visual Art/Chemistry; Visual Art/Museum Studies.

The first year is spent in Foundations where students focus on the development of their creative and technical skills.

A bachelor’s degree in law and society provides undergraduate students with a strong background in how law works in practice in public administration, courts, the non-profit sector, policy, policing, and the justice system. Students learn about legal history and legal policy, how law shapes managerial processes, how it shapes government and the system of justice, and how it affects ordinary people in every walk of life.

Graduates of the program will be ready to work in a variety of settings, including criminal justice organizations, non-profits, policy think tanks, and political institutions. There’s significant demand for this type of degree among the region’s police departments.

The law and society program is designed for students who have earned an associate's degree or equivalent hours and are looking to complete the final two years necessary for a bachelor's degree in law and society.

Civil engineering, the oldest and broadest of the divisions of engineering, implements a range of public and private projects for improving society’s physical infrastructure and the environment. Civil engineers specializing in environmental engineering integrates scientific principles with engineering experience to plan, design, and construct environmental pollution control systems, storm water systems, and  water purification and distribution systems that maintain, protect, and enhance the quality of life. Like all civil engineers,  those specializing in environmental engineering are trained to consider the societal effects as well as the physical and environmental factors that constrain the planning, design, construction, and operation of their projects. 

The undergraduate program gives students the theoretical background, instruction in the engineering application of scientific principles, and professional attitude to serve the public. It typically leads to entry-level positions or to graduate work in technical specialties, business administration, or other professions.

In addition to environmental pollution control and water resources systems, courses that address the behavior and design of steel and reinforced concrete structures, foundations, and surface transportation systems are integrated into the curriculum, culminating in a series of senior-level professional design courses. These simulate the design processes used in the major areas of civil engineering and prepare students for entry-level positions. Most faculty members are licensed professional engineers. KU graduates have successful records in professional practice, research in academic institutions, government and private laboratories, and in managing firms and corporations of all sizes.

Learn to handbuild, throw, slip cast and make molds. Specialized surfaces, like earthenware low temperature majolica, decals, as well as stoneware and porcelain high temperature glazes and atmospheric firings, like gas reduction, salt, and wood are taught as fundamental elements of the curriculum. Both contemporary and historical ceramic and art history is incorporated in studio classes as well as regular group and individual critiques. Advanced classes are not project based allowing students to focus their work and personal explorations while maintaining a vital interactive studio experience with fellow students and faculty with scheduled critiques, readings, discussions, visiting artists and slide lectures. Courses in kilns and clay and glaze formulation broaden student knowledge.

The BA program allows many free electives for background courses in the sciences or liberal arts. The program permits study of traditional geology (with emphasis on the solid earth, the earth’s surface, or environmental geology and natural resources), environmental geology (with emphasis on water or urban environmental geology), or an individually tailored program.

Through our Department of East Asian Languages & Cultures, KU offers six languages: Chinese, Hindi, Japanese, Korean, Tibetan, and Uyghur. Languages are supported by a variety of interdisciplinary courses ranging from literature and art history, sociology, anthropology, political science, business, and economics, to name but a few. KU students from all majors and professional schools are encouraged to explore East Asian studies.

Chinese
In a few short weeks, CHIN 104: Elementary Chinese language students know their four tones and can speak beautifully about basic topics of daily life. Learning characters, the challenging but fun aspect of Chinese, starts slowly the first year, then accelerates the second and third years of study. Advanced-level students from KU can read newspapers and contemporary fiction by the time they graduate; graduating majors are fluent in Chinese.

Japanese
Often considered the "Gateway to the East," Japan is a center for commerce, trade, education, and culture in East Asia. KU alums with Japanese language skills have followed career paths such as acting for Japanese television, banking in Tokyo, and working as a legal expert for Microsoft, as well as many who pursued graduate work in Japanese culture and history. Beyond the practical advantages, studying Japanese possesses its own intrinsic rewards: learning one of the world's most complex languages exercises the mind in unique ways. Japanese language students are never bored!

Korean
Although Korean has been a spoken language for several thousand years, the development of its phonetic alphabet in 1446, hangul, made it the easiest East Asian language to master. Today Korean is the 11th most spoken language in the world. More than half of Korean's vocabulary can be traced to Chinese, and the structure and grammar are similar to Japanese. KU is the only institution in Kansas that teaches intermediate and advanced Korean language courses.

The BS program provides intensive training in geology and other sciences. BS majors may emphasize traditional geology, environmental geology (with a specialized track in hydrogeology), engineering geology, geophysics, or earth and space science licensure. The hydrogeology track, the engineering geology option, and the geophysics option combine basic training in geology with training in mathematics, engineering, physics, and geophysics. The environmental geology option combines training in geology with many different sciences.

Our graduates are prepared with classroom, clinical and laboratory experiences to form their broad understanding of professional nursing. KU grads are ready to work in hospitals, community health agencies, industrial or long-term care facilities, as geriatric nurses, ICU nurses, traveling nurses or flight nurses.

Nursing Licensure

The BSN program prepares students for RN licensure. The National Council Licensure Examination (NCLEX) is the examination for nursing practice in the United States, Canada, and Australia. The exam does not vary across states. Graduates apply for licensure and complete the NCLEX through the Board of Nursing in the State where they plan to practice. Some states belong to the Nurse Licensure Compact which allows graduates to apply for multi-state licensure. For information on individual state's requirements go to the National Councils of State Boards of Nursing website.