Perpich Arts High School recruits for innovative artscience program

Perpich Arts High School, a two-year arts-based program open to all Minnesota juniors and seniors, is offering admission opportunities for this fall in its newest program, artscience.

Using a different scientific theme each year as a jumping-off point, artscience students explore the world and how to make it better, using multiple disciplines to do research, analyze information, work in collaborative teams and create projects. Artscience students at Perpich pursue ideas and possibilities using in-depth, self-directed study. They work across disciplines — combining art and science — to produce innovative projects.

Perpich arts and science teachers, along with community experts and university professors, provide support and guidance to help students develop ideas that improve people’s lives. The artscience program has worked with graphic and furniture designers, horticulturalists, playwrights, biologists, physicians, photographers, scientists, musicians, dancers and ethicists.

“We believe our artscience students gain social skills, learn how to develop and manage a project and build a basic foundation in creativity and the design process,” said artscience instructor Tory Peterson. “We help them become accustomed to making presentations and explaining their work to others. They develop both the confidence to project a dream or idea into concrete and realizable steps and the ability to convince others to invest in the realization of those dreams.”

Interested students and their families may contact the admissions office at Perpich Arts High School: admissions@pcae.k12.mn.us or 763-279-4168/1-800-657-3515. The application deadline for this fall’s program is August 9. The application form is at http://www.pcae.k12.mn.us/ahs/adminfo.html. Admission review for qualified candidates will be the week of August 12. Classes begin August 26.

Perpich Arts High School is part of Perpich Center for Arts Education, a state agency serving all school districts in Minnesota. Created in 1985 by the Minnesota state legislature, the agency seeks to advance K-12 education throughout the state by teaching in and through the arts. Perpich is home to a professional development and outreach program for school administrators, teachers and teaching artists, a public arts education library and the high school.