Dear Faculty Colleagues,

Welcome to what promises to be an exciting and productive academic year!

Over the summer I have been thinking a lot about the many changes in progress for the CCA community. I kept returning to a comment one of the NASAD evaluators made last October, they said that any one of CCA’s numerous upcoming initiatives would be in itself a major undertaking for an institution to embark upon. Never an organization to underperform and staying true to our visionary legacy, CCA has a robust and exciting unification plan that allows us to reach the goal of a single neighborhood campus in SF with increased student housing, meal plans, and enhanced living/learning opportunities for our students. This ambitious undertaking will of course have its challenges, and I am confident it will also be extremely rewarding and exciting to be a participant in this pivotal time in the college’s history. Innovation and embracing change are at the heart of CCA’s pedagogical mission, I know our community will continue to thrive during this time of transition.

This fall we welcomed 100+ first time freshmen to residential life on the San Francisco campus. Having freshmen live in CCA SF based housing is a first in the history of the college and a big step towards full campus unification. If you have been on the SF campus this summer you have seen the rise of the new freshman/sophomore dorm on the corner of Hooper and Eighth. This dorm will be ready for occupancy Fall 2020 and will have an 8,000 square foot dining facility on the ground floor.

With the implementation of Workday Student, we have completed integrating payroll, purchasing, billing, scheduling and registration into one system - a monumental task by any measure and one many years in the planning and making.

In Academic Affairs, we are working with the college-wide leadership and the faculty leadership of the First Year Program (FYP) on a strategic plan for relocating the FYP students by next fall and the opportunity to rebuild and enhance the first year curriculum and experience. This has coincided with several years of work in looking at the academic schedule across the college and a plan to work with academic and program leadership on a new and improved course delivery schedule over this academic year for a 2020 launch.

Program Chair Leadership

We continue to support transitions in the leadership of our academic programs and welcome our chairs to return to a focus on teaching and for faculty to rotate into chairships and play a role in academic and college leadership. At the end of 2019, the following faculty stepped out of chair positions and I would like to take this opportunity to thank them for their collective outstanding contributions: J Carter, Andrew Lyndon, and Ranu Mukherjee.

Please welcome the following incoming chairs:

Design

Sara Bahat, DMBA Program Chair (SP20)

Sara Raffo, Graphic Design Interim Chair

Fine Arts

Jordan Kantor, Grad Fine Arts Program Chair

Christoph Steger, Animation Program Associate Chair

Linda Geary, Painting Program Chair

Humanities & Sciences

Rebekah Edwards, Critical Studies Interim Chair

Carol Elkovich, First Year Core Studio Program Associate Chair

Tirza Latimer, Visual and Critical Studies Program Interim Chair

Faculty Governance Leadership

I want to thank the following faculty for their leadership in faculty governance committees this year. I greatly appreciate their service to the college and look forward to working closely with them and their respective committees this year. Please visit the committee links on the Academic Affairs section of CCA Portal for complete membership lists. I would also like to extend special gratitude to the outgoing EC President, Emily McVarish and EC Vice President, Michelle Murillo, CC Chair, Rebekah Edwards, and APT Chair, Jeanne Finley.

Faculty Senate President and Chair of the Executive Committee

Cathrine Veikos, Professor, Interior Design Program

Faculty Senate Vice President and Assistant Chair of the Executive Committee

Max Leung, Associate Professor, Critical Studies Program

Chair of the Curriculum Committee

Angela Hennessy, Associate Professor, Textiles Program

Chair of Appointments, Promotions, and Tenure Committee

Jeanette Roan, Associate Professor, Visual Studies Program

Ranked Faculty Promotion and Hiring Updates

Congratulations to the following faculty, who were awarded tenure this past year:

Tom Barbash, Writing and Literature Program

Irene Cheng, Architecture Program

Keith Krumwiede, Architecture Program

Việt Lê, Visual Studies Program

Max Leung, Critical Studies Program

Aspen Mays, Photography Program

Christoph Steger, Animation Program

James Voorhies, Graduate Curatorial Practice Program

Congratulations as well to the following faculty for being promoted to the rank of Professor:

Robert Hunt, Illustration Program

Stuart Kendall, Graduate Design Program

Emily McVarish, Graphic Design Program

Maria Porges, Graduate Fine Arts Program

As part of our ongoing commitment to CCA’s ranked faculty, last year we conducted a number of searches for tenure-track and RNT faculty members and successfully hired five new tenure track and five new RNT professors. Please join me in welcoming the following new faculty:

Tenure-Track

Nelson Chan, Assistant Professor, Photography Program

Gregory Climer, Assistant Professor, Fashion Design Program

Jacqueline Francis, Associate Professor, Visual Studies Program

Genevieve Hyacinthe, Assistant Professor, Visual Studies Program

Alison O’Daniel, Assistant Professor, Film Program

RNT

Sara Bahat, Assistant Professor, Graduate Design Strategy Program

Craig Good, Assistant Professor, Animation Program

Juan Carlos Rodriguez Rivera, Assistant Professor, First Year Core Studio Program

David Skolnick, Assistant Professor, Writing and Literature Program

Zachary Walter, Assistant Professor, Animation Program

Upcoming Ranked Faculty Searches

Over the course of the 2019-20 academic year we will conduct searches for several key tenure track and RNT positions. The tenure track searches will be in the First Year Program, Architecture, and Grad Design. We will also launch a search in the fall for the next MDES Chair. Ranked non tenure searches are still being determined and will be announced during the fall semester.

Appointments, Promotion and Tenure (APT) STATS Report

2018-19:

Ranked faculty:

8 awarded tenure

4 promoted to full professor

9 successfully went through pre-tenure review

33 successfully went through promotion within rank

Unranked faculty:

16 promoted to Adjunct II

11 promoted to Senior Adjunct

New Year, New Minor

This fall--thanks to the efforts of dedicated faculty members from across the College--CCA launches a new minor in Ecological Practices, providing students the opportunity to meld environmental knowledge with studio practice as they develop and explore the possibilities of applying deep ecological understanding to their work as artists and designers.

The minor in Ecological Practices allows students to augment their undergraduate degrees with coursework that develops scientific ecological knowledge, environmental humanities and social sciences, interdisciplinary studio practices, and ethical competencies.

I wish to thank Carol Manahan, Associate Professor in the Critical Studies Program, for her work organizing inclusive faculty discussions around creating the minor last year and for stepping in to coordinate the minor in its inaugural year.

Ecological Practices joins the four existing minors: Visual Studies, Writing & Literature, Social Practice & Community Engagement (SPACE), and Computational Practices.

Curricular Grants

The Provost’s Curricular Grants program was reorganized last year to provide larger grants addressing ongoing strategic priorities (up to $10k). These priorities, which will again be in place for the 2019-20 applicants include Sustainability, Diversity and Inclusion, Unified Campus, and English Language Learner Success. Proposals were competitive, with the Curriculum Committee reviewing and ranking all applications.

I am very proud of the three initiatives we are funding for work launching this year:

Decolonial School: The Decolonial Curricular Development Pilot (DCDP) launches a series of processes and methodologies to reimagine CCA courses. DCDP addresses CCA’s need for curricula that facilitate our diverse educational community as we become increasingly international and anticipate campus unification. For DCDP, each academic division will nominate one faculty member to join a cohort that will study decolonial praxis and revise a course to be offered in SP20. In 2020 this cohort will share their experiences with their divisions, present at a Decolonialism Symposium, and serve as mentors to further cohorts of faculty. The Decolonial School will also be presenting at the upcoming AICAD Symposium at Otis in November focused on the theme of diversity, equity, and inclusion.

First to Zero: First to Zero is a series of workshops with Fine Arts and First Year, where students and faculty co-develop zero waste initiatives for the studios where they work and teach. These workshops borrow upon the successful philosophy of Toyota’s Lean Manufacturing initiatives. One important tenant of Lean is that the people “on the floor” (in this case "in the studio") are actually the most expert in identifying opportunities for improvement in reducing waste. The desired outcome of the workshops is that important changes are student identified and student lead, from the ground up, rather than the top down. Successful projects might be adopted by programs/studios for continuing implementation, or iterated upon for successive and continued improvements.

Universal Design in Interior Design: This initiative supports work to revise the entire Interior Design curriculum to embed Universal Design concepts throughout. In order to achieve these goals, Professor Kathrine Lambert--who has been awarded a 2019 Leibrock Scholarship for Universal Design through the Interior Design Educator's Council (IDEC)--will develop and present a five-day workshop in Colorado showcasing the groundbreaking work of our CCA students developed within her CCA course, "Designing for the Body". In Fall 2019, CCA will host workshop leader, Cynthia Leibrock, for a 4-day student/faculty/administration immersion experience. All Interior Design faculty and students will participate in these workshops on campus, laying the groundwork for the full revision of the Interior Design curriculum.

Faculty Development Grants

For the first time this year we have set aside dedicated professional development funds for program chairs. This means that they will no longer be eligible to apply for faculty development grants - freeing up more grant funding for the general faculty, and removing possible conflicts of interest. Serving on this year’s FDG review committee are faculty members Nataly Gattegno in Architecture, James Pierce in Design, Christine Wang in Fine Arts, Tonya Foster in Humanities & Sciences, and Associate Provost Julie Kirgis. The committee meets three times during the academic year to review grants and propose awardees for my approval. Learn more at the grants page in Portal.

Oakland Campus Legacy Committee

The Oakland Campus Legacy Committee (OCLC) was created to consider ways in which the college can thoughtfully navigate the closure of the historic Oakland campus. Chaired by Professor Deborah Valoma, it is made up of faculty, staff, alumni, and students. Professor Valoma will provide a report to the faculty community during this academic year.

Thank you for taking the time to read about these important Academic Affairs updates and initiatives. I look forward to visiting classes and seeing the many ways our students manifest their visions.

All my best,

Tammy Rae Carland

Provost