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C A L I F O R N I A C O L L E G E O F T H E A R T S

Dear Friends,For those of us in academia, fall marks the beginning of a new yeara time to set goals and forge a path. With our campuses once again alive with the activities of our 2,000 students and 500+ faculty, Id like to tell you why Im feeling particularly enthusiastic about CCAs future.

CCA is poised to define and lead next-generation art and design education. We are making strategic investments now that will enable CCA to realize its full potential while staying true to its founding mission and values. Our long-range campus planning process (outlined below) is engaging the CCA community to shape a bold vision to enrich the academic experience and create dynamic environments that support it. We have invested in research to identify our strengths so that CCA can improve outreach to top student applicants and inspire new supporters. And in the last few years we have launched new and revitalized existing academic programs; formed fruitful partnerships with industry and community organizations; and made significant improvements in technology and infrastructure to support faculty, students, staff, and alumni.

Our goal in implementing these improvements, however, is not to reshape CCAs core mission and educational ideology. Rather, we strive to reaffirm our powerful founding legacy in the Arts and Crafts movement, to amplify the colleges reputation for diverse practice, and to promote the distinctive educational model that has defined a CCA education for over 100 years.

Strategic Framework for Campus Planning In June, we completed the first phase of a long-range plana strategic framework to develop a path to CCAs future. Working with the firms Gensler and MK Think, the yearlong process involved faculty, students, staff, alumni, and trustees, and built on our previous work in academic planning with the Academic Pathways project. The findings and recommendations focus on key areas such as student experience and housing. We plan to publish a detailed report soon.

Student Experience During the planning process, we confirmed that one of our ongoing challenges is CCAs two-campus structure and its effect on teaching and learning inside and outside the classroom. The physical divide that currently separates our community of makers presents social, logistical, and most importantly, pedagogical challenges.

Our planning work with Gensler engaged hundreds of people in the CCA community, and through this process we realized that bringing our academic programs together would have far-reaching benefits. It could significantly increase synergies among disciplines; allow us to build new, improved, and integrated facilities for making, learning, and living; and increase connections among CCA community members and with leading practitioners, industries, and supporters outside the college.

Through this phase of planning, we discovered that we have enough land to accommodate the entire CCA academic program on the San Francisco campus. Determining how and when this could happen is the next step. The future of the Oakland campus is a top priority, and we will explore a range of options for how we can best use this important part of our legacy for the benefit of the CCA community.

Housing Given the rising costs of living in the Bay Area, devising housing strategies for students and faculty is crucial. While we are thrilled with the new Panoramic student residencies that just opened in San Francisco, we are now looking several years out at scenarios for additional housing both on and near the SF campus.

Community Input As the planning process moves forward, input from alumni, students, parents, faculty, staff, and friends will be vital to shaping the vision. In the coming months there will be opportunities for you to participate, and soon youll be hearing from us. To keep up to date, visit the campus planning blog (planning.cca.edu). Ask questions and leave feedback at campusplanning@cca.edu.

I am so excited about this next chapter for CCA because I believe the college is poised to define and lead next-generation art and design education. The fields of art, craft, architecture, design, curating, and writing only stand to benefit from a strong, sustainable, and resilient CCA. Thank you for your participation in the planning process; your input is important, and I look forward to continuing to work with you over the next several years to help shape the colleges future.

Stephen Beal, President

Through November 21Artist Sam Lewitt presents a solo show, More Heat Than Light, which inserts a range of sculptures, texts, and images within the gallery space. Frances Scholz and Mark von Schlegell present their ambitious film project Amboy. The film, shown as a nonlinear installation, follows a narrative arc that centers around the journey of a filmmaker who tries to learn the fate of a fictional artist called Amboy.

UPCOMING WATTIS EXHIBITIONS

Building on the success of the concentration in social practice in our MFA in Fine Arts Program and recognizing the distinct needs of its students, the college is launching a new 36-unit MA program in Social Practice & Public Forms for fall 2016.

The program will offer students a deep immersion in contemporary creative practices such as site-specific projects, community collaboration, interactive media, public intervention, and activist art practices. For more information or to apply, visit cca.edu.

The brand-new Panoramic Residences welcomed its first students at the end of August. Micro-apartmentstwo-person studios and four-person suiteshouse 200 CCA students half a mile from the San Francisco campus. They share the building with students from the nearby San Francisco Conservatory of Music, who occupy the upper floors. All residents have access to a roof deck with sweeping views of the city.

NEW MA IN SOCIAL PRACTICE & PUBLIC FORMS

PANORAMIC RESIDENCES OPENS

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Exploring Science in the [Art + Design] Studio November 57Hosted by CCA, the 2015 AICAD Symposium examines the place, purpose, potential, and role of science in contemporary art and design education. Over 100 artists, scholars, and educators will participate on the San Francisco campus in a series of talks and workshops. The keynote speaker is Natalie Jeremijenko, NYU professor of visual arts, who is also affiliated with both the computer science and environmental studies programs there. The Association of Independent Colleges of Art and Design (AICAD)

is a nonprofit consortium of 43 leading art schools in the United States. The symposium is part of a three-year grant from the National Science Foundation to support CCAs ongoing initiative to further the integration of science curriculum in the art and design studio.

Writing and Literature is pleased to announce the appointment of Tom Barbash 1 to the faculty. Barbash holds an MFA from the University of Iowa Writers Workshop and is a former Wallace Stegner and Scowcroft Fellow at Stanford University. His short story collection, Stay Up with Me, was recently published to great acclaim by Ecco/Harper Collins.

Writing and Literature also welcomes Tonya Foster 2 , who holds an MFA in poetry from the University of Houston and comes to us from CUNY, where she is a Humanities Fellow completing a PhD with a concentration on 20th- and 21st-century poetry and poetics, the poetics of place, Africana literature and performance, and trans-national literary modernisms.

Joining the Photography faculty is Aspen Mays 3 , who received her MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and has taught at The Ohio State University and Ox-Bow School of Art in Michigan. She recently completed a Fulbright Fellowship in Santiago, Chile, where she worked with astrophysicists using the worlds most advanced telescopes to look at the sky.

Graham Plumb 4 comes to the Interaction Design Program having spent 15 years creating interactive experiences for museums, entertainment venues, and retail and healthcare environments. He was creative director at Snibbe Interactive and was lead interaction designer for Ralph Appelbaum Associates.

Nilgun Bayraktar Welprin 5 joins the Visual Studies faculty. She has taught classes at UC Berkeley on migrant and diasporic cinema, European cinema, Iranian cinema, Turkish cinema, and road movies. Her interdisciplinary scholarship will enable her to teach across many divisions of the college.

The Painting/Drawing Program welcomes Karla Wozniak 6 . She received her MFA from Yale School of Art and is coming to CCA from Knoxville, where she taught at the University of Tennessee. She was included in a group exhibition this year at the Knoxville Museum of Art and is represented by Gregory Lind Gallery in San Francisco.

NEWLY TENURED FACULTY

Amy Campos, Interior DesignJessica Ingram, PhotographyJason Kelly Johnson, ArchitectureJonathan Massey, ArchitectureColin Owen, Industrial Design

NEW TENURE-TRACK FACULTY

AICAD 2015 SYMPOSIUM