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“I don’t really show my students how to paint a mural in my classes,” said Jessica McCoy, a professor of art at ���Ҵ�ý since 2006. “We all paint together. We collaborate. We learn from each other how to paint that mural.”

In McCoy’s courses, students study the history of public art and explore how artists engage with the communities where their work appears. They travel throughout the region to see murals in context, and they become working artists themselves. Each year a community partner, such as a local school or library, selects one of McCoy’s student proposals for its site, and the class brings the design to life. The scale of the project, McCoy said, always catches students off guard. 

“Everything’s just bigger … the brushes, the amount of paint. You need more of everything,” she said. “Painting a mural forces you to think about scale in a completely different way.”

The physical demands come as a surprise as well.

“They definitely feel more tired than they expect,” McCoy said. “We’re hauling buckets of water and ladders, cleaning dozens of brushes, scrubbing walls before we start. When paint spills, we’re down on the concrete scrubbing that too. It’s a lot of dirty work — but it’s important. That’s part of how you build connection and trust with a community.”

An acclaimed painter whose imagery was translated into a tile mural welcoming subway riders in downtown Los Angeles, McCoy understands the power of those connections and makes sure her students do, too.

“I think the standard of mural painting at ���Ҵ�ý is pretty high,” she said. “It’s exciting to see what students create here — and what many of them carry forward beyond campus.”