Published April 3, 2025
BY AVERY PALSHAW
With Carmel High School’s visual arts teachers pushing for dual enrollment, the school’s Advanced Placement Studio Art classes will be replaced by three Monterey Peninsula College courses that high school students can take from the CHS campus starting next school year.
AP 3D Art/Design is going to be supplanted by two semester-long courses, MPC Handbuilding 1A and 1B, and both will be taught by art teacher Steven Russell. Graphic design and photography teacher Holly Lederle is planning to take on MPC Intro to Graphic Design, which is going to be implemented in the place of AP 2D Design.
MPC Handbuilding 1A and 1B will focus on working with and developing skills with clay. (photo by STEVEN RUSSELL)
Using Canvas, MPC’s course management system, CHS students will be able to earn transferable college credit at the end of each semester rather than waiting on an AP test score to come out over the summer.
As for curriculum, both Lederle and Russell note the new classes will have fairly general course descriptions. Handbuilding 1A and 1B students will focus on learning the basics of ceramics techniques like coil and slab construction and creating small-scale sculptures.
“It gives me, as a ceramics teacher, a lot of creative freedom as to what projects we’re going to be doing with the clay,” says Russell, who also hopes to include some introductory wheel throwing into the classes.
As for MPC Intro to Graphic Design, the first semester will primarily hone in on taking photographs and learning how to edit them through Adobe Photoshop, while the second half of the course will apply those skills to create projects like documents, magazines or layouts for websites.
Students will be able to gain four units of college credit per semester in these classes, compared to the overall three units that AP courses offer high school students. With that, not all colleges transfer AP credits into college credit, so there is more certainty surrounding dual enrollment in that regard.
Whereas College Board, the developer of AP courses and exams, requires art students to formulate a portfolio of pieces all driven by a common idea throughout the duration of the school year, these MPC dual-enrollment classes will instead be crafting an unthemed body of work to be graded by the teacher themselves.
“The goal of the AP class is much more fine arts based and it’s much more conceptual, whereas the MPC class is more career and technical education,” says Lederle.
According to CHS principal Libby Duethman, the process for approving these classes to be incorporated into CHS curriculum took several months. The administrator explains that the art teachers had to first communicate with MPC on their interest in doing dual enrollment with one of their programs, show her a completed course proposal and present that proposal to the Site Leadership Team to get a recommendation. From there, Duethman brought the plan to the district administrative council, and after gaining their approval, the CUSD school board had the final decision.
“At the beginning of the school year, if [teachers] want a new course for the next year, [they] have to start the ball rolling,” says Duethman.
As for student opinions, many say the dual-enrollment art courses give students a way to gain basic skills in a subject area without the added pressures of an AP class.
“I decided to take MPC Handbuilding next year because I never got the chance to do AP 3D my junior year and I wanted to take a class that was relaxing and stress free,” explains junior Rainn Nachbar. “If there was only an AP option for next year, I would be more reluctant to take it.”
Sophomore and current Art II/III student Maya Steinberg, who also plans to take MPC Handbuilding, says she likes having the ability to gain more college credit, but hopes there’s leeway in the curriculum for students to work on projects of their choice.
Both MPC Handbuilding courses and MPC Intro to Graphic Design will be available for juniors and seniors to take in the 2025-26 school year.
