State of the Campus Address
President Steven D. Lavine
January 31, 2008
Good morning. This is the first time in 20 years that I've tried to sum up the state of CalArts in a formal statement. Instead of reviewing department by department and program by program, I am going to try to summarize what I take to be CalArts’ overall condition.
In a word, I'd say “excellent.” Certainly CalArts is in the strongest shape it has been in my 20 years, which does not mean we don't have issues to address. I will touch on them later. Overall, I'd say we are in very good condition.
CalArts’ reputation is the highest it has been, nationally and internationally, at any time in its history. This is reflected in the desire of outstanding artist/educators to serve on our faculty and, in fact, many of the schools made major new hires in the course of the last year. When other colleges tried to hire away our faculty, we were almost always able to create the conditions that allowed them to
stay at CalArts.
The position of CalArts is reflected as well in our ever increasing applicant pool which is up again for next year. In the case of dance, applications are up by more than 50%. More importantly, we continue to enroll gifted and original students despite the high cost of attending a private college. CalArts has always attracted a particular kind of student, one with extraordinary access to his or her own imagination and an extraordinary passion for the arts. Again and again as I talk to visiting artists or new faculty, they tell me they just have not encountered students like ours.
We also continue to attract and retain exceptionally dedicated staff across the Institute. The quality of people working on the staff side is indicated by the fact that in the months since Dean Houchin retired last summer, we have continued without missing a beat. There is, you should know, a search for a new Vice President for Finance and Administration. This is a wonderful opportunity to bring in someone with outstanding skills in budgeting and planning and also, I hope, with the business skills to help us develop collateral lines of income. Next week we will begin to winnow down the pool of applicants to those who will be brought to campus for intensive interviews.
Beyond its people, key to any college is its programs. A healthy institution is one that keeps track of its goals and aspirations, but also evolves to meet changing conditions. I am happy to say that that process is evident in programs across the Institute. Sometimes changing names of programs, as, for example, Photography becoming Photography and New Media indicates improvements to their areas of focus as our programs continue to evolve with the times. More often it is something that happens quietly within programs, as curricula changes and open faculty positions are filled. Sometimes that process of evolution is reflected in the creation of new programs altogether, as in our new MA in Aesthetics and Politics which is right now accepting its first entering class; and the proposal for a program in Game Design which is now working its way through the Councils of the Institute.
Outside our degree programs there is also a continuing development of new structures and opportunities. This year was the third year that the Theater School and the Music School offered a two week intersession, during the first two weeks of Spring Semester, as a time for special short courses, immersive involvement in special projects, and interdisciplinary and team-taught courses. I think this idea has proven itself successful and I hope that in the future we are going to see some version of this activity in every school.
There are also an increasing number of international opportunities at CalArts, chiefly driven by our goal that as many students as possible can graduate with international colleagues and experience, and partly driven by the high reputation of CalArts in Europe, Asia and around the world. These programs are sometimes hampered by the vast difference between free education abroad and high tuition in the United States, and now by exchange rates that reflect the lowered value of the dollar. But still these programs are happening, such as the School of Theater’s Erik Ehn-led travels to Rwanda, or our evolving set of exchanges and commissions with the Dartington Trust in England, which will make possible this summer Stephan Koplowitz’s ambitious site-specific TASKFORCE dance project. We are now beginning to explore the possibility of some kind of semester or yearlong activity under the rubric Arts in the Americas, conducted jointly with Mexico’s National Center for the Arts which, to our good fortune, is run by a CalArts graduate.
One other area of special achievement and evolution I would like to call attention to is the diversity of CalArts. With 33.4% of CalArts students coming from households the census would recognize as ethnically diverse and another 11% as international students (though we don’t actively recruit internationally), CalArts is one of the most diverse arts colleges or highly selective private colleges in the country. We owe a good part of this progress to CalArts’ nationally recognized Community Arts Partnership, which itself goes from strength to strength.
Underpinning these achievements has been the most ambitious fundraising campaign that CalArts has ever undertaken and one of the most ambitious by any independent college of the arts. In December, we were able to report to the Board that we had reached our $125 million goal. The Campaign has raised $14 million in new scholarship dollars, some of which is endowment and some of which has been expended as annual support. When all the funds are in, it will have led to the creation of 13 new endowed chairs, which have allowed us to honor outstanding faculty while at the same time, allowed the overall salary pool to rise at or a little faster than the rate of inflation—something that would have been impossible to achieve on tuition income alone. The Campaign has also allowed us to put in place our first-ever regularized faculty sabbatical system, a crucial factor in making CalArts a place at which outstanding artists want to teach. The Campaign has also allowed a number of internal upgrades and improvements, most notably the creation of a new 3-D animation laboratory and the upgrading of the facilities for experimental animation. It has also given us REDCAT and the new indoor/outdoor recital hall now going up just beyond the Graphics Lab Courtyard. The new recital hall opening next fall as The Wild Beast reflects that over the past decade the Music School has almost doubled in size, by far the highest percentage growth of any school at CalArts. While, along the way, we were able to build some new music practice rooms, we have not been able to add new classrooms or performance space. The Wild Beast will be both a classroom and a performance space which can be used entirely as an indoor space or can open to the outside for concerts on the lawn.
I want to say a little more about REDCAT, especially because I am sometimes still asked why we invested so much to build it, if it was not meant primarily for students and faculty. The answer is threefold: (1) it was meant to create a new opportunity for emerging artists in Los Angeles, many of whom are CalArts alumni, especially those doing more progressive work. It is a response to alumni, especially in dance and experimental theater, but also in the other disciplines in which graduates felt they had to leave Los Angeles because there were not enough progressively-oriented outlets here. As of this past fall, over 200 alumni had performed, exhibited or screened their work at REDCAT; (2) it was evident to me that REDCAT was a way for us to bring leading artists to Los Angeles to engage with local artists, ensuring a robust national and international dialogue in the arts. The number of artists from all fields one finds in the audience at REDCAT suggests that the need was acute; (3) REDCAT was designed to make CalArts more visible. Our campus here in Valencia is good for getting work done, but less good for keeping CalArts in front of the public and especially potential donors. REDCAT has significantly altered that equation. Since the advent of REDCAT, mentions of REDCAT or CalArts have doubled, with an average of two mentions a week in the Los Angeles Times.
REDCAT has done many things for CalArts: increase its profile locally, nationally and internationally, which has helped us to attract new supporters and create new exchanges and other partnerships; bring numerous guest artists to campus since virtually every outside artist who performs at REDCAT is expected to do some sort of workshop or presentation on campus. In addition, though not built as primarily a student or faculty space, it has created opportunities for 1,200 students and faculty in its first four years, as well as 200 alumni. 18,000 student, faculty, and staff tickets have been issued, with 20% of students saying that have been to REDCAT four times or more. In the first four seasons, over 1,000 local artists and performances have been involved with projects at REDCAT and over 100 local organizations have hosted performances or events at REDCAT.
I’ve spoken at some length about the great strengths of CalArts today. I want to focus now on the challenges: (1) financial aid; (2) facilities; (3) making the most of the opportunities CalArts’ diversity gives us; (4) safety and security; and (5) counseling, mentoring, and other advising for all students. The first of these—financial aid—is the most pressing. The others are listed in no particular order.
Despite the dollars raised for financial aid by our fundraising campaign, we still are not keeping pace with the rising costs of attending CalArts. The result is that many outstanding applicants who want to attend cannot afford to; and the average student is graduating with significant burdens of debt: In 2001, the average debt of graduating BFAs was $38,440; by 2006 it had grown to $56,648. Now, in many cases that debt was accrued at CalArts. Many of our students transfer bringing previous debt with them and these are cumulative figures. You might expect the figures for graduating MFAs to be worse and they are. In 2001, the average indebtedness as $41,886; by 2006, it had grown to $59,775. Again, remember that most of these students are bringing undergraduate debt with them, so not all this debt was from their time at CalArts.
We are doing two things to try to address this issue. The Board of Trustees has voted to extend the Campaign for CalArts by another $25 million, with the hope that at least half those funds will be for new scholarship endowment. Second, with the next entering class we are putting in place many new financial aid policies designed to ensure that the dollars we do have are used as effectively as possible. Among these changes are (1) scholarship awards for entering students will be multi-year awards--the time it normally takes to get a degree (unless there is a significant change in the students performance or in the family income) (2) we are establishing a larger strategic fund designed to help programs that are having unforeseen challenges in meeting their goals. There are many more that are technical and procedural that I won’t try to explain here.
When we established priorities for the fundraising campaign, we agreed as a community that faculty and staff salaries and financial aid were to be the primary goals, with everything else secondary. Since then enrollment has grown at CalArts, and our facilities aren’t getting any younger. Jesse Smith and the physical plant staff are doing heroic work to upgrade existing facilities a step at a time. This year alone there have been numerous improvements including A115 Animation room, new floors in the dance studios, new Theater classroom and dressing room, Critical Studies remodel in BB-6 including new office space, remodel of Theater, Dance and Critical Studies offices, BB-6, C-Annex and a new Campus Safety vehicle.
In the planning stages for next year is a comparable list, including a costume trailer for Theater and the upgrading of the lighting in the art galleries.
The bigger project on the boards right now is a new dormitory, which will include about $1 million of classroom and rehearsal space, plus a new workout room. We should be able to finance this project with state, tax exempt bonds, which we will then pay back with dormitory revenues. We are in negotiations with an
architecture firm right now. We are going to move this along as fast as we can. but my guess is that we are talking about at least three or possibly four years before completion.
Because so many of the issues of enhanced safety and security also depend on the work of Facilities Management, it makes sense to talk about these issues here. This year has seen an increase in non-student incidents on and around campus. In order to address this increase CalArts is taking steps to upgrade our ability to protect the campus community. We have made the following changes and upgrades: (1) we have purchased a new Campus Safety vehicle to help improve our responsiveness; (2) we have purchased protective gear for our staff; (3) we are working with students to increase safety awareness and increased patrols around trouble areas, primarily Butler Building 6 and C-Annex; (4) we are working with local law officials to determine what procedures need to be in place to improve response times; (5) we have added police and fire scanners to the Campus Safety Office, so we are more aware of off-campus activities that may affect the Institute; (6) we have increased training of our current staff and new hires; (7) and in July we will be making uniform changes.
CalArts is implementing a new campus alert system that uses current cell phone, voice mail and texting technology to inform the community in case of an emergency. The system is provided by Connect-ED, which is used by the major school districts in the Santa Clarita Valley. This system allows (1) emergency notification via cell phone, text, voice mail or email systems; (2) student/staff/faculty notification on up to four phone numbers and two email addresses; and (3) messages to be sent either from campus as well as remote locations.
Student numbers/emails were collected during registration in January. Staff and faculty information is currently being assembled. Once all of the information is collected and vetted we will be sending it on to Connect-ED for implementation. We are hoping to test this new system in coordination with this semester’s fire drill.
It is important that CalArts maintain its unique creative environment, while recognizing that outside forces must be addressed with a consistent and well defined safety plan. It is our hope that these and future changes will add to the Institute’s overall safety and preparedness.
Issues of living successfully with our own diversity have occupied many of the councils of the Institute for the past two years, and were the subject of our Town Hall meeting in the fall. Already, more attention to these issues has been built into new student orientation and I think we can expect this component to grow over the next years. There is, I believe, a growing attention to issues of diversity in the hiring of faculty, which is reflected in a number of critical appointments over the past two years. I hope you all saw the announcement that went our last week that a new personal counselor on the Student Affairs staff, Melissa Shephard, has experience in offering workshops in multiculturalism. Right now, a job description for a new position as assistant provost for equity and diversity is working its way through the Dean’s Council and the Academic Council. The holder of this position will be the point person in an Institute-wide effort to: (1) encourage greater student, faculty and staff understanding; (2) to encourage sensitivity toward differences in cultural, ethnic, religious and sexual background and orientation; and (3) to develop policies and programs that help prepare CalArts students to live and act respectfully in a complex and diverse world, and to take advantage of their own distinctive talents and resources in making their art.
That’s a mouthful. What it comes down to is that this person’s job will be to wake up each day ready to work with all the councils of the Institute in developing policies and procedures, as well as in facilitating workshops and helping to strengthen attention to diversity in life and education at CalArts.
Having said all this, I must also say that the pressures on next year’s budget are extraordinary, in part because the Board approved the smallest percentage increase in tuition in a decade (from $31,290 to $32,860, or 5%). Right now in planning the budget a salary line has been included but we don’t know yet where this process will end. We may have to wait until midyear to hire someone, but I hope not.
Finally, I want to turn to this issue of mentoring and academic counseling. The student mentor relationship has, at its best, been one of the glories of CalArts, but right now the strength of mentoring varies considerably from school to school and department to department. Moreover, traditionally this relationship has been focused on the student’s individual artmaking, which is as it should be. Yet students also require counseling about requirements, about what best to take outside their own school, and about a host of other issues. We don’t yet have a solution for moving forward, but we must develop one, to ensure that every student has the optimal opportunity to make it through to graduation. One step we have taken is to develop an At-risk Students Committee, under Associate Provost John Bache, designed to identify any student who seems at risk academically, behaviorally, or in any other way, and then to offer appropriate counseling. This is a critical safety net but at the other end of the scale, we must do everything possible to ensure that every student is able to take the best possible advantage of CalArts. That’s a challenge this year, and will be every year; and so here is, perhaps, where I should stop to take questions or comments.