March 1, 2023
Dear MICA faculty and staff,
In my State of MICA address earlier today and the follow-up memo, I described the challenges MICA is facing now and our evolutionary journey forward. Change can be unsettling, sometimes difficult, but always necessary for an organization to evolve. The many emotions evoked by change are complex and can be conflicting—excitement and sadness, anger and hope, uncertainty and conviction. In moments like this, I find that knowing where we are going helps make getting there less scary and more energizing.
I offer in this letter where I believe MICA should be heading on our evolutionary journey, building on a number of existing strengths and commitments at the College.
I do not attempt to lay out specific plans. They need to emerge from the reimagining and redesigning work that will be undertaking by the campus community in the coming months in accordance to the Strategic Plan 2022-2027. It should be noted that what I share below represents my reflections on the necessary changes and road ahead, not just for MICA, but for art school education in general; we are not alone on this journey.
With wicked complexities and multiple ruptures, the last few pandemic years have made abundantly clear that we neither have the option to return to status quo nor should we seek to preserve what no longer works. The pandemic is the devil’s gift of an opportunity to contemplate what hardship has revealed, evolve current thinking and practices, and fashion new ways forward.
By confronting the paradigm-shifting forces facing higher education with purpose and vision, we at MICA can seize the moment to boldly question: How do we leverage unprecedented challenges to reconsider and shape the College’s educational, operational, fiscal, and community futures?
For MICA to retain a deservedly secure footing in the increasingly volatile landscape of higher education in service of students and assert our relevance in society, we need to demonstrate willingness and effectiveness to address the following priorities:
I. Answer the Return on Investment (ROI) Question
While national surveys have consistently identified art as a most popular field of college study since 2020, more and more families question the value of a college education. To convert student interest into enrollment commitment, MICA and our peer art schools must articulate persuasively our educational advantages.
Art schools are passionate communities traditionally strong in demonstrating the joy and power of creative and intellectual outcomes, and some like MICA have come to emphasize social impact outcomes. For a well-rounded return on investment (ROI) argument to win over students and families, we have to embrace three additional ROI commitments.
Career and financial outcomes: Prospective students report job and earning outcomes as three of their top five “very important” factors in decisions to go to college. In career preparation, art school faculty focus on the sustainability of professional practice and tend to sidestep the earning aspects. The mounting financial pressure faced by today’s students makes career preparation that supports a livelihood a heightened responsibility of art school educators. Career preparation and a freely creative environment are not antithetical to each other; there are exemplars within MICA’s majors that well illustrate that this is not an either-or but rather a both-and approach.
Personal wellness and resilience outcomes: It is astounding that a first study of its kind suggests that around a third of first year university students have or develop moderate to severe anxiety and/or depression. National survey results also indicate that art school students are on the more affected end of this spectrum. Student success goals must now consider academic achievement as well as wellness while in school and skills to maintain resilience after graduation. Goal accomplishment requires a holistic combination of advising, student support, professional development and support for faculty and staff, wellness services, and curriculum-based teaching and learning.
Lifelong adaptability outcomes: A most powerful return on investment of an art school education is hard to quantify but warrants emphasis. A majority of today’s grade schoolers will hold jobs that do not exist yet and the speed of change, especially in technology, is exponential. Traditional education assumes general stability with some degree of change. Teaching and learning today must equip students for constant and accelerating change. With a creativity-focused education that cultivates imagination, continuous skill acquisition and iterative problem-solving skills, we can graduate students who are fearless and capable of reinventing and adapting with a confident core of anchoring values.
II. Transition to an Integrative, Interdisciplinary, and Inclusive Education
The research findings of the 2016 National Endowment for the Arts Report of Creativity Connects: Trends and Conditions Affecting U.S. Artists reveal that the population of artists is growing and diversifying and that the contemporary creative ecosystem is increasingly entrepreneurial, breaks through disciplinary barriers, and connects with non-arts sectors. Artists of many backgrounds, thus, have more potential for self-reliance and impact. A poignant finding is that training is not keeping pace with artists’ evolving needs and expanding opportunities.
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.
They reflect the nation’s most diverse generation yet, with a majority being nonwhite. The canonic validity of Eurocentric materials and perspectives is necessarily challenged as racially and culturally biased. In addition to decentering whiteness, MICA’s evolution calls for demographically expanding student access, more options in credentialing pathways, and more flexible modes of attendance. The sum total is to equitably serve and elevate the voices and careers of creative professionals, educators, and leaders who are representative of all in society.
In the fundamentals that young creatives need to learn, the basics now must include how to function in a diverse team, how to construct a network, how to co-author their creations, how to nurture and engage audiences through both traditional venues and emerging platforms. Racial and intercultural literacies, as well as soft skills such as interpersonal navigation, self-care, communication, problem solving, time management, and empathy, are as essential to professional and personal success as exploring new technical skills.
Our students today need MICA to accelerate the transition of its education model from a traditional one-way transmission of knowledge, perspectives and skills from expert teachers to novice learners to the model of a multi-generational and multi-cultural learning community in which faculty and students interact in a productive, empowering, and playful exchange of teaching and learning. Project-based learning can and should involve external partners of all varieties, enriching the otherwise specialized art school environment. Exciting and successful exemplars at MICA demonstrate the value of a more pervasive approach.
In such an open setting, a MICA education can transcend silos and 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 have purposeful careers across an expanded platform in arts and non-arts sectors.
III. Expand the Platform for the Careers and Impact of Graduates
In the “normal” pre-pandemic world, artists and designers contemplated, reflected, recorded, and helped define humanity for the ages. They drove an important part of the economy and their human-centered work served as a great equalizer in people connections and social cohesion. Such contributions will persist and are more needed than ever.
In the “new normal” endemic world, there are increasing possibilities for artistic minds and abilities. The non-linear processing of artists will be more valuable as linear thinking and solutions have failed to improve our world, and design thinking is an influential framework and practice. And this aligns with what we see MICA students today want and need in their education. They gravitate to communities and want to make the world better and more sustainable. As such, their career paths are much broader than selling work in a gallery or working in a design studio; in the start-up world of now, an entrepreneurial future and contingent work life are likely for many art school graduates.
With raison d'être to serve our students and society at large, MICA should be unapologetically fusing creative action with social and economic action to position graduates as versatile and inventive agents for themselves and for the world. Our art and design education can cultivate students to pose dynamic questions that lead to the transformative answers societies require.
Our quest is to prepare the next generations of creative professionals who are capable of success and contributions in multiple arenas in a world of unprecedented complexities and change. As such, MICA graduates should be recognized and sought after in traditional art, design and cultural fields as well as other spheres such as business, environment, health, science, social justice and cohesion, and technology.
Up to now, MICA’s enrollment has depended on students’ desiring a specialized education usually organized by siloed disciplines. To be complacent with that reality is to remain marginalized as a niche education provider – and a complacent mindset puts us at escalating risk of unsustainability in an evolve-or-perish higher education landscape.
Through responding to today’s complex shifts and issues, we can reshape our future and provide more value to our students. The work requires the kind of creative and human-centered actions that artists and designers are especially capable of generating. Art school education, including that at MICA, must boldly disrupt its own traditions and rapidly evolve not only to meet students where they are at but also equip them to answer the needs of an ever-changing world. We can then prove its value as a unique educational pipeline that offers an unbeatable ROI to both students and society.
Thank you for taking the time to read this letter. If you find yourself in general agreement with the ideas herein, I believe you will find the unfolding MICA journey rewarding and I look forward to your continued contribution.
Samuel Hoi