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All students entering the Art Department as majors are admitted under either the B.A. in Art or the B.A. in Art History, Theory, and Criticism. After completing the foundation courses and one other course in ART, CDES, or ARTH, those wishing to pursue the B.F.A. in Art, B.F.A. in Art Education or the B.F.A. in Communication Design will be required to pass a formal portfolio review for admittance.

Portfolio submissions must be completed by the end of the 6th week of the fall and spring semesters. Faculty will conduct reviews and students will be notified of the results in time to make registration decisions for the following semester. Refer to portfolio submission deadlines below.

Fall 2026 Portfolio Submission Deadlines

Portfolios are to be submitted electronically to Ìýby Friday, September 25, 2026 – midnight.

Applicants will be notified via their msudenver.edu email accounts of their acceptance statusÌýno later than, Friday, October 9, 2026 – midnight.

• BFA CDES Portfolio Guidelines
• BFA CDES Portfolio Checklist
• BFA CDES Portfolio Evaluation Rubric

CDES BFA Portfolio Application Workshops:

Students interested in learning more about the Communication Design portfolio submission process are encouraged to attend one of the following workshops or arrange an individual advising appointment with their advisor; Professor Lisa Abendroth or Professor Shawn Meek. If you don’t know who your advisor is, please email the Department of Art office at [email protected].

Workshop Dates:

Open Workshop #1—Open to all students

• Weds, 9.2.26, 12:30 – 1:30pm
• Location: virtual via MS Teams:
• Prof. Lisa Abendroth: [email protected]

Open Workshop #2—Open to all students

• Weds, 9.9.26, 11 – 12pm
• Location: CN 311H / on campus
• Prof. Shawn Meek:Ìý[email protected]

Open Workshop #3—Open to all students

• Thurs, 9.17.26, 6:30 – 7:30pm
• Location: virtual via MS Teams:Ìý
• Prof. Shawn Meek:Ìý[email protected]

Contact Professor Shawn Meek
with any Portfolio Questions

 

Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA) in Communication Design

º£½ÇÉçÇø’s Communication Design program challenges students to become informed, thinking designers. Through specific coursework that fuses semantics, pragmatics and syntactics, students discover how to design for the people and contexts that require communication while learning to craft effective and culturally appropriate messages in a broad range of design media. The program positions five pedagogical pillars as significant to our mission: making meaning, furthering function, pursuing process, mediating messages, and fostering form. These pillars are underscored by a contemporary practice that integrates design fundamentals with emerging media, research, and history/theory.

Consistent with the Department of Art, student learning outcomes are designed around three assessable themes: research, execution, and articulation.

Graduating students earning the B.F.A. in Communication Design should be able to:

• show evidence of intellectual inquiry and curiosity in design research;
• convey ideas that are consistently reinforced through the execution of cohesive work(s) that are the result of the process of making;
• effectively articulate oral, written and visual design processes and concepts.