March 1, 2023

Dear MICA faculty and staff:

Following the in-person State of the College meeting today, I am writing to you about the future of the Maryland Institute College of Art and how adjusting to that future will impact the workforce and educational approach at MICA.

This is the most important communication I have yet shared with the faculty and staff as MICA’s president. It is also the most difficult one I have written in my thirty-plus years of art school leadership. I wish I could sit down with each of you to share and explain the content. I will be as straightforward and as clear as possible in providing information. I thank you in advance for reading with care and with an open mind.

The Hard Truth & Necessary Evolution

Three years of smaller incoming undergraduate classes have effectively made MICA a smaller residential college. While the pandemic intensified enrollment challenges, it is not the sole cause of the current situation. The higher education landscape is due for contraction; the 2026 enrollment cliff—a well forecasted and lasting demographic decline in U.S. college entrants—and the public questioning of a traditional degree credential are two key factors driving the volatile and changing landscape of higher education. Joining other sectors such as technology and retail, colleges and universities across the country are downsizing.

MICA needs to become leaner and more agile as an educational provider. In decisively and strategically addressing this reality and the demands of contemporary education as outlined below, MICA is seizing a challenging moment in its history to do the hard and necessary work of adapting and evolving its model to meet the needs of today’s students and society. Our institutional history demonstrates that evolution is core to MICA’s longevity and success.

To set MICA’s necessary evolution in motion, the administration and the Board of Trustees jointly announce the following –

• A declaration of Changed Enrollment Circumstances
• An institutional rightsizing that involves first a voluntary separation program
• A reimagination and redesign of the College’s education and operation based on the themes, goals, and initiatives of MICA’s Strategic Plan 2022-2027

Declaration of Changed Enrollment Circumstances

With this memo, the administration and Board of Trustees are declaring a state of Changed Enrollment Circumstances per Section 3.7.8 of the MICA Faculty Handbook:

Changed enrollment circumstances shall be defined to include sudden or unplanned decline in student enrollment, the detrimental financial effects of which are too great or too rapid to be offset by normal procedures outlined in the Handbook. The President, after consultation with the Executive Committee of the Board of Trustees, will declare when such changed enrollment circumstances have occurred, necessitating layoffs.

Changed Enrollment Circumstances is a response to enrollment challenges. The compounding issues within higher education require a thorough rethink of how the College is structured to continue to deliver and grow our value to our community of students, educators, alums, creatives, supporters and partners, as well as our City and our State.

Institutional Rightsizing that Involves First a Voluntary Separation Program

The goal is to bring our employee-to-student ratio into alignment with our foreseeable enrollment size while preserving the quality of student experience. The reduction will involve the following steps:

• First, in order to establish an equitable package for both unionized and non-unionized full-time faculty and staff, the administration will be negotiating a voluntary separation program with SEIU Local 500 and offer an equivalent package for both.
• If there is not a sufficient number of voluntary separations, the administration will work with SEIU Local 500 to develop an involuntary separation program. A similar program will then be implemented for both unionized and non-unionized full-time faculty and staff.

A timeline of how these steps will unfold is as follows:

• There will not be any involuntary workforce reductions for faculty or staff in FY23, which goes through May. There will be no change to the terms of the adjunct faculty’s Collective Bargaining Agreement that is in its first year of a three-year duration.
• The union negotiation of the voluntary separation program, the offering of the program, and the acceptance process will likely take the rest of the FY23; this program for unionized and non-unionized faculty and staff will be offered at the same time
• If needed, the development and implementation of the involuntary separation program will take place during the first half of the summer

It is natural for faculty and staff to want to have the affected positions and people identified as early as possible, the package terms clearly articulated, and the process to be over quickly. Please understand that we must honor the process of collective bargaining for our union-represented faculty and staff as the administration works with them and SEIU Local 500 to negotiate fair and compassionate outcomes.

Reimagination and Redesign of the College’s Education and Operation

The art and design students of today are fluid and experimental in creativity and they expect flexibility in their education. As makers, they freely access tools, mediums, and disciplines to give shape to their ideas. As students, they want freedom and choice in mixing and matching courses to achieve their professional goals. To better meet their evolving needs and preferences, starting in Fall 2023, Academic Affairs will begin implementing the undergraduate restructuring it has been planning with the faculty since Fall 2022. The restructure expands interdisciplinary pedagogy and curricular choices for the students while creating more equitable and efficient operations in the classroom and throughout the College. A memo from the Provost’s Office that describes the AY24 academic restructuring will be issued tomorrow.

Over the next few years, MICA will continue its academic evolution per the Strategic Plan 2022-27. Our shared goal is to bring experiential learning, career development, creative entrepreneurship, social and cultural engagement into the curriculum through a seamless mix of interdisciplinary pedagogy, co-curricular activities, and real-world experiences. The outcome is for our graduates to be capable of success and contributions in multiple arenas in a world of unprecedented complexities and change.

Further rebalancing of MICA’s degree programs and flexible educational pathways that serve both traditional and untraditional students will lead to more adventurous pedagogy, a richer mix of teachers and learners in MICA’s educational environment, and widening educational services with more affordable options for students of all backgrounds.

The reimagination and reframing of MICA’s education for students of today and tomorrow will be a partnership effort of administration, faculty, staff, and alums. MICA will use the rest of this calendar year to convene campus teams for deep engagement in this partnership work. The administration will consult faculty and staff leadership to develop the engagement plan.

For those who wish to get a better understanding of MICA’s evolutionary path forward, I invite you to peruse this document:

• An open letter to MICA faculty and staff that contains my reflections on the subject; it reinforces many of MICA’s Strategic Plan 2022-2027 priorities

Evolution takes time. MICA is embarking on a transformative journey with an arc of 7 to 10 years. Realistically, we will need 3 to 5 years to redevelop MICA’s enrollment and it may take another 4 to 5 years for curricular and operational transformation to settle into campus systems, practices, and culture.

Evolution is Core to MICA’s History and Success

MICA has evolved and adapted multiple times since its inception. The College began in 1826 as Maryland Institute for the Promotion of the Mechanic Arts, once had music and engineering in its curriculum, and comfortably mixed inventors, mechanics, and artists in exhibitions. A focus in art and art education emerged in the late 19th century, and recent decades witnessed MICA’s development into the contemporary art and design urban anchor that we are today.

As MICA will soon reach its bicentennial milestone in 2026, there is a unique responsibility to pivot towards a sustainable and even more relevant MICA for its third century. By rescaling our operation and reframing our educational approach while we have the fundamental strengths and assets as an institution, we are making tough but strategic moves to overcome a time-limited crisis and reposition the College for long-term success.

MICA has proven through history that it knows how to innovate its academic offerings while preserving the prestige and value it has always delivered, delivers now, and will continue to deliver in the future.

Thank you for your careful reading and consideration of this communication.

For additional information — including an FAQ — and details on follow up information sessions, please visit this website.

Sammy