The Post-Baccalaureate Certificate program is a one-year, full-time, 30-credit studio-based curriculum of graduate-level study in fine art. It is designed to fully immerse students in a rigorous graduate-level academic, critical, and artistic environment, where they can develop and hone their artistic practice and portfolio.

Many students take advantage of PAFA's Post-Baccalaureate program to:

• Take the next step in serious art education after a change in career, or seeking an undergraduate degree in a different discipline
• Prepare a competitive portfolio for future MFA applications
• Engage in a year of experimental art-making
• Bring new focus to the theoretical and technical foundations of their practice through extensive feedback and critique from faculty and visiting critics

The Post-Baccalaureate curriculum places an emphasis on experimentation, new media, and techniques, as well as class participation and collaboration.

Each student is assigned a private studio, a program advisor and a team of faculty critics. Students and faculty meet regularly to assess each student's artistic needs. Every artwork is understood within its particular genre, with special attention to subject, form, content and the use of materials, skills, techniques, and images.

In addition to individual studio critiques, group critiques are integral to the learning process. Post-Bacc students participate in two weekly seminars: one in readings, research, aesthetics, and criticism, and another in Drawing. The discussion seminars are intended to stimulate the intellectual rigor with which to refine and redefine, the artistic interests of the participants. Ultimately, all of these seminars are meant to serve the needs of studio art making. Students are permitted to audit one Certificate course per semester to develop particular skills and may elect to take the master's level painting course for credit.

The majority of the time students are expected to be in their studio, making work on their own. Students in this program are able to take full advantage of PAFA's Visiting Artists Program, and are frequently able to sign up for individual one-on-one critiques with Visiting Critics from the MFA program.