Tag Archives: Visioning Process

Creating Our Future Through Art Center’s Strategic Plan


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.

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Learn to Create. Influence Change.

Art Center President Lorne Buchman unveiled Art Center’s new strategic plan last night to the College community. (Read our live tweets for the event on Twitter.)

The five-year strategic plan represents the culmination of more than a year of deep conversations, brainstorms and working group sessions with the entire Art Center community—students, faculty, staff, alumni, trustees and friends—that explored the intrinsic qualities of the great art and design college of the future. A website has been created as well that will explain the plan and track progress.

Also revealed was the College’s new mission statement: Learn to create. Influence change.

The strategic planning process coincided with the first full year of Buchman’s tenure, as well as the College’s 80th anniversary and related celebrations. The timing of this process gave the community opportunities to consider the College’s distinguished past while embracing the future.

Art Center’s five-year strategic plan offers a roadmap for getting there. The plan is organized into three broad pillars that align with Art Center’s mission: “The Conservatory Spirit,” “Convening Diverse Communities & Disciplines” and “New Spaces for Learning.”

The Conservatory Spirit
The first pillar, “The Conservatory Spirit,” reflects Art Center’s longstanding commitment to serve as the foremost college of higher learning for ambitious artists and designers to master their craft and learn from experts in their respective fields. To ensure Art Center’s programs remain on the leading edge and that students are prepared for leadership in a pluralistic society, the strategic plan calls for the expansion of transdisciplinary learning among students from different disciplines, as well as the creation of new undergraduate, graduate and public programs that will address emerging fields and provide students with additional opportunities for growth.

Convening Diverse Communities & Disciplines
The second pillar, “Convening Diverse Communities & Disciplines,” centers on the need to nurture a diverse and robust College com-munity of students, faculty and staff (in terms of culture, identity and socio-economic status.) Increasing the number of student scholarships is but one vital aspect of creating a more diverse community on campus. In addition, Art Center plans to offer a broader range of disciplines and partnership opportunities with industry and nonprofits that will aid in students’ creative development.

New Spaces for Learning
Equally important, students must have access to the types of learning environments—both physical and online—that will foster collaborations among the various art and design disciplines. The plan’s third pillar, “New Spaces for Learning,” calls for the improvement and development of Art Center’s South Campus in downtown Pasadena as well as a thorough renovation of the College’s Ellwood Building at Hillside Campus to replace outmoded and inefficient systems and materials. The plan also calls for the creation of online education programs and tools to expand and support curriculum and encourage new modes of learning.

Through these various initiatives and resolutions, the strategic plan will position Art Center to shape and define culture, to encourage relevance and social responsibility in art and design, to prepare graduates for leadership roles in society, and to advance learning, research and making. Our collective efforts, together with support from our partners and advocates, will make Art Center the leading college of art and design for the 21st century.

The full text of Art Center’s 2011–16 strategic plan is available online at artcenter.edu/createchange. Also, check out our live tweets from the event.

Who Will Take on Craig Ellwood?

Photo © Steven A. Heller/Art Center College of Design

More than three decades ago, Craig Ellwood Associates designed a building for the College’s new Hillside Campus nestled in the San Rafael Hills overlooking the Rose Bowl. The 200,000-square-foot modernist steel-and-glass slab soon became an Art Center icon and a Pasadena historic landmark.

A lot has changed since we originally moved here, including the way we teach and the resources our students need. At 35 years old, the Ellwood building is in need of a few changes and renovations, and we’re looking at architecture firms for the job.

The renovation will encompass not only the classroom structure of the building, but also make important seismic upgrades. We’ll be looking at issues of sustainability and access as well.

Our search for an architecture firm parallels the College’s strategic planning process, which has engaged students, faculty, staff, alumni, trustees and members of the community in a meaningful dialogue about the future of art and design education. The strategic plan focuses on critical issues related to curriculum and pedagogy, governance and diversity, and facilities and technology—some of which will be addressed in the renovation.

“Art Center is looking forward to getting to know each of these firms as we look for the best fit for this project, our culture, our mission and our strategic plan,” said Art Center’s Senior Vice President of Real Estate and Operations George Falardeau.

The finalist firms include:

Art Center will announce the chosen firm early next year. And that’s just the beginning! The strategic plan and selected firm will inform Art Center’s Master Plan with lots of discussion between the College, our neighbors and city officials before anything is set in stone (or glass and steel). Stay tuned!

For more details, our friends at A/N Blog first reported the story: Exclusive: Art Center Renovation Shortlist

Art Center Visioning Update from President Buchman

Dear Art Center Community:

I am writing to update you on Art Center’s planning process and to outline the next steps to completion. As many of you know, we designed the entire process to consist of two major phases of work: the visioning phase and the strategic planning phase. The midpoint and fulcrum of the process took form by way of a retreat of the Board of Trustees (on June 23 and 24) in which the Trustees heard the work completed by the visioning task force committees to date, focused their priorities and set the course for the final strategic phase to be concluded by the end of the calendar year.

Art Center students, alumni, faculty and staff convened for visioning brainstorming sessions in January.

The Board, I believe, was energized by what they heard and were compelled by the fact that hundreds of participants representing a cross-section of the community were involved at various points in the deliberations. They were engaged during the retreat in a thoughtful and rewarding dialogue that included the chairs of the visioning task force committees as well as representatives from the Chairs’ Council, Faculty Council, Art Center Student Government (ACSG) and senior staff. The effort was inclusive and courageous.

The work of the retreat coalesced the findings of the task force committees into a cogent statement of educational purpose, a statement serving at once as a tribute to the heritage of the College as well as to a dynamic vision for the future.

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Thinking Outside the Dot

The brainstorming group in the SDR.When he first arrived on campus in October 2009, Dr. Lorne M. Buchman said one of his first tasks as Art Center’s new president and chief executive officer would be to listen to students, faculty and staff to hear their thoughts on a future direction for the College.

“We must first come together as a community to envision our opportunities, to imagine new possibilities, and to enter into a bold, habit-breaking conversation about our educational future,” wrote Buchman in December when he announced a comprehensive planning process for the College.

To get the conversation rolling, Buchman invited the entire community to attend two back-to-back events: an evening kick-off panel discussion in the Ahmanson Auditorium featuring provocative national thought leaders (for a recap, see yesterday’s post); and a brainstorming session the following day to tackle key issues derived from Art Center’s mission statement.

On January 14, approximately 300 members of the Art Center community—faculty, staff, students and alumni—gathered in the Student Dining Room for the daylong brainstorm. “I want to encourage you all to imagine without limit,” urged Buchman to the larger-than-expected group. “Imagine without limit what Art Center has always been, or what an art and design college ‘ought to be’.”

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Rethinking Art Center’s Future: Guest Panelists Weigh In

This past January not only marked the start of a new year and decade, but the beginning of a new visioning process for the College as well. Two back-to-back events—an evening panel discussion featuring national thought leaders, and a daylong brainstorming session tackling key issues relating to Art Center’s mission statement—were open to the Art Center community.

On January 13, faculty, staff, students, alumni, trustees and friends packed the Ahmanson Auditorium for the visioning kickoff. The evening session—Twittered and webcast live—featured a distinguished panel of speakers: Andrew Blauvelt, design director and curator at the Walker Art Center; Katherine Hayles, professor and director of graduate studies in literature at Duke University; Steven Oliver, board member of the grant-making organization United States Artists; and David Rice, chairman and founder of The Organization of Black Designers.

Before introducing the panelists, Art Center President Lorne Buchman stressed the imperative of higher education to value driven learning and thinking. “The capacity of our students and graduates to affect change is enormous,” he said. “We need to be educating responsible citizens—the question is how to do that.”

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Visioning Process Webcast Tonight

Tonight we are kicking off Art Center’s visioning process spearheaded by President Lorne Buchman. We encourage all members of the Art Center community to join the dialogue.

The discussion begins tonight, Jan. 13, in the Ahmanson Auditorium from 7:30 to 9:30 pm (PST). We have invited a panel of distinguished guests to help us gain a new perspective on art and design education:

  • Andrew Blauvelt – Design director and curator, Walker Art Center in Minneapolis
  • Katherine Hayles – Director of graduate studies in literature at Duke University
  • Steven Oliver – Member of the board of directors for United States Artists and former chairman of the board of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
  • David Rice – President of DesignCom, Inc. and chairman and founder of The Organization of Black Designers

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