Virginia Commonwealth University's sculpture department is rated as the top one in the country by arts academics polled in a 2008 U.S. News & World Report survey. Among the faculty's interests in sculptural material are wood, steel, computer imaging and 3D printing, plaster, plastics, clay, textiles, video, performance and robotics. As of January 2011, the department has nine full-time faculty members, plus four part-time and four visiting faculty members at the Richmond, Virginia, campus. The college offers bachelor of arts and master of fine arts degrees.
Rated the country's number-one painting and drawing program, Yale University's Painting and Printmaking department has 36 faculty members, as of January 2011, whose titles include professor, lecturer, critic, senior critic, assistant professor and visiting professor. Around 21 students are admitted each year, and each student works in his own 300-square-foot on-campus studio space. Students at the New Haven, Connecticut, institution have access to a printmaking studio equipped with etching and lithography presses, silk screening facilities and digital printing resources. The program offers graduate and undergraduate degrees in studio art.
Rhode Island School of Design's (RISD) graphic-design department topped the list of the country's best. The college offers instruction in typography, book arts, digital and interactive media, strategic thinking, information design and visual narrative, according to the college's online catalog. As of January 2011, the graphic design department offers a team of 12 full-time and 16 part-time faculty members. The Providence, Rhode Island, college offers bachelor of fine arts and master of fine arts degrees in graphic design.
Ranked highly for its department of photography, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) offers and has a photography faculty of 24. Aside from traditional photography the school also instructs students in course on motion picture film, video, new media and animation. The Chicago, Ill., college's facilities include color-calibrated Macintosh workstations, Imacon film scanners, a Kodak Creo large format flatbed scanner, laptop support areas and 12 professional digital printers with output up to 24 inches wide. SAIC offers graduate and undergraduate degrees in photography.