What does the great art and design school of the 21st century look like? How can it best serve its students?

Last year, the Art Center community came together to find out. Through an all-inclusive visioning process, we addressed the challenges of making our distinctive education cutting-edge and pertinent—the what, where and why—and envisioned Art Center’s future.

The result of this process is Art Center’s 2011-2016 strategic plan, unveiled last week to the College community. The five-year plan both honors Art Center’s distinguished 80-year history and imagines its future.  It shapes our core values into a new model for art and design education for the 21st century—one that ensures continuing excellence, relevance and impact for decades to come.

We sat down with College president Lorne Buchman to find out more about the strategic plan, how it came about, and what it means to the Art Center community.

Dotted Line: Why was it important to involve the entire Art Center community in the visioning process?
Lorne Buchman: Art Center has a reputation for being incredibly rigorous with our students—it’s key to the quality and the kind of education that we offer. One of the wonderful things about the planning process was that it was a chance for us as an institution to be as rigorous with ourselves as we are with our students.

In coming up with this strategic plan, we felt it was really important that everyone—alumni, students, faculty, staff, Trustees—participate in the planning process that culminated in the plan. The College is filled with brilliant, creative, wonderful people who care deeply about this institution, and who have the power to design their future. The spirit of this planning process proceeded as such.

Dotted Line: And a new College mission statement came out of the process as well?
Buchman: Yes. I’ve never loved a mission statement, but I love this one: “Learn to create. Influence change.” It’s such a profound educational philosophy, and what our College is about.

Dotted Line: Why was a strategic plan necessary?
Buchman: There is a new ecology of learning going on. Higher education is changing incredibly rapidly. Our students are changing—they’re different than they were five, even 10 years ago. We must be attuned and responsive to these things.

Dotted Line: In what ways have students changed?
Buchman: Our students are coming to us with a real kind of social consciousness.  I think the success of Designmatters demonstrates this rather well. Students are coming to Art Center with the goal of finding meaningful work after graduation. They understand that what they do as artists and designers has ramifications for all communities and corners of the world. They can lend a way of thinking, creating, solving problems and addressing issues. That’s very deep and profound, and it opens up a new kind of knowledge. It’s our duty to help them in this pursuit.

Dotted Line: One of the plan’s key pillars is the Conservatory Spirit, which isn’t a term one usually applies to an art and design school. Can you elaborate?
Buchman: The idea of Art Center as a conservatory has its roots in the school’s history. This has always been a place that prepares students for creative and career success. Akin to Juilliard, we provide the highest caliber of education, we employ a professional faculty who bring a sense of real-world relevance to the classroom environment and we offer programs that meet the demands of society—all to ensure artists and designers have a place in the world. This is where the conservatory spirit comes from.

Dotted Line: How will the College ensure that it remains affordable to students?
Buchman: Access and affordability are very important issues. Our economy is creating a different kind of student, one that is certainly coming here for a job, but also is coming here as a consumer. They want to know the value of the education they’re getting here, and want proof that value exists. This is a sensibility that’s coming to light not just at Art Center, but throughout the world of higher education.

Increasing the number of student scholarships is a vital aspect of our efforts. More than 80 percent of our students receive financial aid. By increasing scholarships, we can assist those students who will benefit most from an Art Center education regardless of their financial resources.

Dotted Line: The plan addresses issues of diversity in a way that the College hasn’t before. Why is that important?
Buchman: A diverse learning environment is essential to an educational institution. Cultural and socio-economic diversity is one component, and increasing access and affordability can help us achieve that.  We also seek diversity by encouraging interdisciplinary practices and partnerships, building on our relationship with industry and social agencies to further the dialogue between creative practice, engineering, science and urban planning, among many others so our students will have the opportunity to be able to engage in a more complex, more nuanced conversation. This will promote the relevance of art and design in the 21st century.

Dotted Line: There’s been talk about campus expansion. What does the plan envision?
Buchman: We’re looking at some pretty interesting and exciting things on the physical front. First, we have a lot of maintenance and seismic work to do on the Ellwood building—we’re going to use this opportunity to re-create it.

The plan calls for one college with two centers, two fully operative campuses. We’re looking to build South Campus out to be a fully operative campus. It’s not a done deal by any stretch, but we have the opportunity to purchase the post office property that’s directly north of South Campus. We’re looking at turning the 35,000-foot building on that property into an open fabrication space. We have to take our industrial design programs from model making to large-scale prototyping work. We need space to do this, and the Hillside Campus is not well suited for that.

So we plan to build two viable campuses, and we’ll ensure that there is an interchange that we structure. This is very important. There will be two campuses, but students will get the experience of both, so that a mutually enriching exchange can happen between the two. A shuttle service taking students back and forth between the campuses is an exceedingly important development in this plan. And if we can create student housing near South Campus, which this plan also calls for, there will be more opportunity for students to be able to go back and forth.

Dotted Line: How will progress be measured on the plan?
Buchman: Each year, it’s my responsibility to present a series of goals for the year to the Board of Trustees, which will be published online. These goals will be specific and outline the initiatives of the strategic plan that we’re going to be working on that year.  Because if you timeline this thing out, obviously by the second, third, fourth, fifth years, things gets more vague.  So we’re going to do a year-by-year set of goals, set of ways of realizing the initiatives of the plan, measuring progress as we go forward according to those goals.  We also really want to be communicative about the strategic plan.  Changes that happen, ways in which it’s progressing. Much of this will be done on the strategic plan website.

Learn more about Art Center’s strategic plan, and read the entire document, on the Create Change website.