Claremont Colleges Theatre

Colleges and Universities A-Z Harvey Mudd College
1

<p>Hey everybody, I'm the new General Manager for the student-run theatre group on campus and I just wanted to give you all some information about theatre at the 5-Cs. I hope you will get involved next year! </p>

<p>I'm also a theatre major so feel free to ask any questions about student theatre, department shows, classes, or anything else to do with theatre.</p>

<p>Bottom Line Theatre/The Druids is our student theatre organization for the five colleges. We do lots of wonderful things (produce plays, go see shows in LA, have workshops, ect). Be sure to check out our upcoming AUDITION WORKSHOP at the beginning of the semester, Tuesday August 31st at 7pm! </p>

<p>For more information go to: BLT/Druids or e-mail us at <a href="mailto:blt.druids@gmail.com">blt.druids@gmail.com</a>! You can also check out our new facebook group: Welcome to Facebook | Facebook</p>

<p>Also, the 2010-2011 season was just announced for the Pomona College Department of Theatre and Dance. Here is the link if you are interested: 10-11 Season - Department of Theatre and Dance</p>

<p>Thanks and I hope you have a fantastic summer!</p>

2

<p>Do you know if there is a theater class that can count as one of the required humanities classes for Harvey Mudd students?</p>

3

<p>There are theatre classes that can count towards an arts requirement for mudd</p>

<p>The Humanities requirements are broken down into three Categories: Humanities (History, Philosophy, etc.), Social Sciences (Psychology, sociology, etc.), and Arts (Theatre, drawing, etc.)… There is some overlap between the categories, but you get the general idea.</p>

4

<p>sunny holiday, my friend goes to mudd and has a concentration in theatre…here is what she says. but basically, yes, theatre will count towards a humanities requirement :). hope this helps!</p>

<p>You’re required to do 12 HSA courses (humanities, social sciences, and the arts).</p>

<p>You’re required to concentrate in 1 of the subjects in one of the 3 “distributions”: Humanities; Social Sciences; Arts, Literature, and Languages.
You must take at least 4 courses in this concentration, though it doesn’t generally matter what those courses are (I’m concentrating in theatre, so I need at least 4 theatre courses and other arts courses do not count towards this).</p>

<p>For each of the other 2 distributions, you must take 2 courses in separate subjects (so, I could take a philosophy and a religious studies course, but not 2 philosophy courses), though of course you may take more, they just don’t fill additional requirements for distributions.</p>

<p>In addition, 5 or 6 (depending on various things) of the courses you take must be on campus. These can overlap, so if I take a philosophy course at Mudd, it counts towards this and towards one of the distribution requirements.</p>

<p>One course has to be IE (“integrative experience”). Theatre is not this, so that’s mostly irrelevant to this aside from the total number of courses.</p>

<p>You need a total of 12 courses, and any courses beyond the distribution, IE, and on-campus requirements can be, essentially, whatever you want.</p>

<p>So, if you concentrate in theatre, 4 courses can satisfy the concentration requirement, but any theatre courses you take beyond that won’t do anything for you aside from give you more HSA credits. If you don’t concentrate in theatre, only 1 theatre course will go towards any requirements aside from, again, the total number of credits. I think that students don’t often find themselves lacking much in HSA credits, though, so you’d probably only be using, like, 2 theatre courses for this.</p>

<p>Sorry if that was confusing. The short answer is that yes, you can count them for HSA requirements, but you can only count a finite number of them. Mudd is not the school to go to if you want to double major with theatre. Also, if it’s relevant, you can’t get a minor in theatre at Mudd. I tried; they literally are not capable of granting people minors in anything but math, science, engineering, and computer science, so you just can’t do it.</p>

5

<p>You may want to post this on the Theatre Major forum as well… it would be helpful for prospective students considering Claremont Colleges :)</p>

6

<p>That’s not quite what I recall them having told us at ASP - changing Core means that for our class and future ones everything is going to be a little different. There are only 10 (required) elective (plus 1.5 non-elective) HUM classes, at least 5 of which have to be taken at Mudd. Beyond that, I don’t remember the details, but this is an important qualification to any and all HUM concentrations.</p>

7

<p>ASP likely did not go into such great detail, but I’m almost certain it’s still the same. Basically, all that changed was the first semester course (now a half-semester writing course). It used to be a full semester hum course. So instead of 12 courses, you have 11.5, and I believe your second course is now also set (being a similar one to what we used to have in first semester). However, the 2/2/4 requirements in subject areas should still apply to you for your 10 elective courses, you just have one less course to do them in.</p>

<p>And personally, I took a course in modern theatre last semester (which was awesome) at Pomona, counted towards my HSA requirements.</p>

8

<p>Here is what they told us a the ASW:</p>

<p>Common Core : summary</p>

<p>*Math: MV Calc; Linear Algebra, Differential Equations, Statistics over 3 semesters </p>

<p>*Chemistry (full year) - 1 term Chemistry Lab</p>

<p>*Physics (2½ semesters) - ½course in Special Relativity Theory
2 semester courses in:
•Classical Mechanics (with lab)
•Electromagnetism & topics in Quantum Optics</p>

<p>*“Choice Lab ” </p>

<p>*1 semester each of Computer Science, Biology, and and Engineering </p>

<p>*½ semester writing-intensive course taught across the curriculum </p>

<p>*1 course in Humanities, or Soc. Sci., or Arts (also writing intensive) </p>

<p>And for the humanities beyond the core they said:</p>

<p>*10 (elective) courses in Humanities, Social Sciences and the Arts </p>

<p>Also, we were told you can do an Off-Campus major – does that mean though, you can’t do an Off-Campus minor?</p>

9

<p>We were not given the specifics of what was required for our humanities courses until over halfway through first semester. Before that we were told pretty much the same thing (just 10 HSA courses after core, and that’s as detailed as it got.) They won’t actually tell the frosh about the subjects and concentrations and whatnot until they’re here; it’ll probably be during their first semester writing course.</p>

10

<p>mom2kids: Yeah, no off campus minor. The idea is if you decide you really don’t want to pursue math/science/ engineering, you have a way out by doing an off campus major. However, you’d have to get a minor in math/science/engineering. That is the only time Mudd students get minors.</p>

<p>I’m now confused about a few things:</p>

<ol>
<li><p>So say I really like Philosophy, Psychology, and drawing. And I wanted those to count as my H- S- A. You’re saying I can’t have all my humanities courses be philosophy, all my social science courses be psychology, and all my arts courses be drawing? (No worries here if this is the case; I’m interested in taking other Literature/history/ other art media courses as well, I’m just curious). </p></li>
<li><p>I can only count one philosophy, one psychology, and one drawing toward my HSA requirements? Unless I choose one of those as my concentration… which means say I could have 4 philosophy credits count toward my HSA requirement, plus one psychology and one drawing, leaving me with four classes I have to take outside of those subjects?</p></li>
<li><p>What is the division of the HSA requirements since there are 10? 3/3/4? What’s this 2/2/4 thing (haven’t heard of it)?</p></li>
<li><p>There are three new classes for freshman. Autonomous Vehicles, Energy Engineering, and Art and Application of Calculus. What do these count as? Do they not count toward graduation requirements?</p></li>
<li><p>On the same lines as the above question… If I’m an engineering major and decide to take a theoretical physics course, will that count for anything? I heard I would be able to do this now with the new core?</p></li>
<li><p>Since there are 8 semesters at Mudd, and 10 HSA required courses (outside of the 1.5), does this mean most semesters Mudd students take two HSA courses?</p></li>
<li><p>What courses do Mudd students usually take as pass/no credit? Do Mudd students always utilize that once a semester pass/no credit option?</p></li>
</ol>

<p>Thanks!</p>

11

<p>Also, where does the Integrative Experience tie in to all of this? Does it fit into the HSA or major requirements, or is this just another additional requirement?</p>

<p>The hmc website also states there is the option to have a “student-initiated” IE course. How often does this happen, and what are these courses like?</p>

12

<p>sorry i can’t be more helpful when it comes to credits and what classes count for what…i go to scripps, not mudd. but i do know that it is possible to major in theater at mudd, but not minor.</p>

13

<p>Blackroses:</p>

<p>1./2. Pretty much. The one exception is in the distribution of your concentration. If you were to concentrate in philosophy, you could use all philosophy classes for your humanities requirement. But for the other two distributions, you’re required to take two different classes. (At least for the class of 2013…I’m not sure if/how they’re changing hum requirements for the class of 2014 and on besides reducing hum courses from 12 to 11.5.) </p>

<ol>
<li><p>I think this has been mentioned before, but I’ll try to summarize. There are 3 distributions (arts/languages/literature, humanities, social sciences). 4 classes come from your concentration (which is in one of these distributions). For the two other distributions, you take 2 classes of different subjects in each distribution. That’s 8 total, so then you’d have 2 more elective courses to make a total of 10. There’s also an on-campus requirement, so a certain number of your hum classes have to be at Mudd.</p></li>
<li><p>I’m not sure about Autonomous Vehicles and Energy Engineering…I think those are engineering electives that frosh can choose to take (since they’re letting you pick one course, I think), but I haven’t heard anything about them. And from what I can tell, Art and Application of Calculus is a 1-credit course that isn’t part of math core but is designed to help out students who may not have as strong a background in calculus or want extra practice with the material. There’s also a General Chemistry Intensive that serves a similar function (except for chemistry, obviously).</p></li>
<li><p>I could be wrong, but I think the credits would just count as elective credits towards the 128 you need to graduate. Depending on your major, you’ll have more or less elective credits…for example, engineering has a lot of requirements, so you don’t need as many elective credits. Physics, on the other hand, has fewer requirements, so you’d need more elective credits.</p></li>
<li><p>1 or 2 hum classes is typical. I know of one person who spent one semester taking all hum classes…but of course, that would get balanced out with other semesters. It also depends on your major (again, with engineering you don’t have as much room for taking random classes), but generally people take at least one a semester to stay on track.</p></li>
<li><p>I can’t think of any off-hand. I think there are a good number of people that pass/fail classes whenever they can, but I don’t really have any hard numbers or anything.</p></li>
</ol>

<p>IE: I believe the IE requirement is no longer in place for the incoming frosh…so you don’t really need to worry about it.</p>

<p>Sorry about the length, but hope that helps.</p>

14

<p>No clue about the new requirements, but yes most semesters I took 2 humanities classes and 1 for a couple. It’s recommended that you don’t take more than 2 technical classes at a time, and certainly not more than 3 unless you want to die.</p>

<p>I only pass/failed one class my whole time, though I really didn’t need to. I don’t think people do it that often, as you can only pass/fail one hum class each year, which are the classes I think people are more likely to pass/fail. You can’t pass/fail core/major requirements so for non-hum classes it would have to be an elective, which you generally don’t take till your latter years and are usually the classes you’re interested in and wouldn’t need to/want to pass/fail.</p>

<p>Something people should note, just getting to the 128 credits needed to graduate requires you average 16 per semester (possibly minus summer math) which is a lot, so you’ll need to take a lot of courses regardless of if they “count” for something.</p>

15

<p>Are there opportunities for CMC and Mudd students to take theater courses at Pomona? Are they “low priority” for classes? Would a student who wants to take all of the Pomona technical theater courses (with LOTS of previous experience) be welcomed onto the production team?</p>

16

<p>Students of all 5 Claremont colleges can easily take classes at any college, only occasionally are you required to get permission from the instructor. I don’t really know anything about theater, but there are many 5C clubs and for teams I’m fairly sure they would let non-Pomona students join, as not every college has one.</p>

17

<p>Technical Theatre–1 bie792: YES! everyone is welcomed onto the production team, but especially if you have experience. you can also get a job working in the shop or working doing lighting stuff. lots of opportunities to do crewing for shows. when the sign-ups go up for auditions on the first day of classes you can sign up to tech for the fall shows. the courses are also really cool. i took theatre crafts: lighting and sound last semester and loved it. next semester, the sceneographic imagination and theatre crafts: properties/sets/costumes is being offered, as well as make-up. let me know if you have any specific questions! come to the open house at 5:30 at seaver theatre on tuesay, august 31st to meet people and get more info!!! (also, lots of teching opportunities with the student theatre group: BLT/Druids)</p>

18

<p>also, students from any college can do theatre at pomona, there is the students theatre group at pomona for all 5-c’s and also a group with CMC, althought i don’t know much about that one. i go to scripps, not pomona, but they are very welcoming!</p>

19

<p>Thank you for that info. My son is actually going to be a HS Senior next year. I guess we are wondering if Mudd students actually, in real life, have any time to be seriously involved in technical theater?</p>

20

<p>^ My son had time this year to be “seriously involved” in a performing group and a couple of social activities. He’s not an A student (yet:)), but he’s doing ok with quite a bit less high school preparation than most of his peers. So from my perspective, the answer is yes.</p>