One of Iowa State’s most successful programs is also one of the best kept secrets.

New Art Basics (NAB) is an art education program in the design college that introduces new and innovative art teaching styles to graduate students, all of whom have left the program with jobs arranged.

“It’s different ways of teaching art education with different strategies and lesson plans,” said Matthew Safley, graduate student in NAB. “We’re taking the old way art education was presented and giving it a new spin.”

“There isn’t another program exactly like this anywhere,” co-director Barbara Caldwell said. “It’s very innovative.”

“It involves a very progressive combination of goals for art education that was ahead of its time when it started, and it’s still on the leading edge,” she said.

The program was started after Dennis Dake, co-director of NAB and professor of art and design, gave a keynote speech at an Art Educators of Iowa convention in 1985. The theme was “Why Art is Basic,” and Dake said he got more out of giving the speech than he expected.

He said the way art is presented is not basic enough. He felt many people thought art classes are “only important if you’re going to go on to be an artist,” he said.

Dake’s suggestion to change that perception included finding out the element about art that is attractive to other disciplines like engineering, medicine and other non-art-related careers.

“You’ve got to be able to see visual ideas, not just talk about them,” he said. “That kind of thinking still isn’t being taught as a basic subject in our schools.”

Dake said after he spoke, 30 people ran up to him and wanted to form a project to bring out learning to think visually.

“It seemed to me there were skills that artists had kept just for their own discipline that would be valuable to others,” he said.

Dake convinced his friend John Weinkein, a fellow professor in art, to help develop the project. They expected it would last for one year, but people demanded more and NAB is now going on its 14th year.

The program holds two-week sessions during the summer for three graduate credits, and it is now offered on the World Wide Web as a pilot program for the summer.

Dake said the program has undergone several changes through the years. In the beginning, it was just a lot of teaching ideas on paper. Several years later, NAB received a grant to create a computer network. Last summer, databases were created and this summer the Web class is underway.

Dake’s next goal is to bring the program to as many people as possible, especially through use of the Web course.

There currently is a franchise-style class at Washington University in St. Louis catering to the Missouri art teaching community.

“It’s changed a lot in terms of use of computer technology,” Dake said.

The undergraduate teacher preparatory program was eliminated a couple of years ago, and it became exclusively a graduate program.

“We’re finding principals and superintendents calling for people in NAB,” he said, which is part of why the program has a 100 percent job placement rate.

“That’s pretty good news for our education students here,” Dake said.

Caldwell called the employment rate “amazing.”

“Last year, every student that walked across at summer graduation had a job,” she said.

Caldwell said the program has a good reputation.

“It’s not an easy program, but [students] get a lot of support and worthwhile experience and a network of ideas,” she said.

The ideas include art activity ideas generated by those who participate in the program; the list of ideas is available to other members.

Caldwell described them as “rich in art history, appreciation of humanity and visual thinking.”

The ideas will be available to those who sign up for a course and on the Internet, and students can continue to stay part of the program and share ideas when they become teachers.

Dake said the program provides lifelong learning.

“What we do is provide them with all this help,” he said. “They rejuvenate each other.”

Workshops are held on the last Saturday of each semester to keep teachers who graduated with NAB education informed on new techniques.

“It’s good for teachers out there to see new, good ideas,” Dake said.

“We’re pretty proud of the fact that it works in classrooms and helps kids,” he said. “We just think this is very practical education for a career.”

Dake said he doesn’t want to limit the skills taught in NAB to art education.

“We’d like to find other opportunities to use NAB thinking skills to connect with other disciplines,” he said. “People need to be visually literate.”