Dear Friends,
As Advisory Council members, you are by now familiar with my refrain: technology, globalization, and new forms of creativity are rapidly changing the arts, artistic practices, the way we access and participate in cultural activities, the commerce of the arts, and the way “creatives” can and must make a living in the cultural and creative industries. And it’s incumbent on a public university arts college to adapt to those changes as rapidly—and radically—as our students need.
With that in mind, I am excited to share news of the creation of the new School of Design and Creative Technologies, a fourth major academic unit of the College of Fine Arts that will include a new Department of Design, a new Department of Arts and Entertainment Technologies, the Design Institute for Health, the Center for Integrated Design, as well as a new creative entrepreneurship and innovation initiative.
I’m proud to be able to announce that the school will be led by design industry thought-leader and Center for Integrated Design founding Director Doreen Lorenzo, who you met at last year’s fall meeting. Lorenzo was formerly CEO of frog design, one of the leading independent design firms in the country.
Bruce Pennycook, a distinguished professor of electronic music composition and founder of several of these curricular innovations, will chair the Department of Arts and Entertainment Technologies. Monica Penick, a visiting associate professor, will serve as interim chair of the Department of Design as we do a national search for a permanent chair. And Jan Ryan, a veteran executive in the Austin technology industry, venture capitalist and a leader among women entrepreneurs, will be joining the college as Director of Entrepreneurship and Innovation.
The new school is building its curriculum and faculty in close collaboration with the commercial industries in which we expect our future graduates to be employed. We will focus on educating students for creative professions needed now and in the future: game design, design for the healthcare industry, designing for artificial intelligence, creative technologies in theatre and music, entrepreneurial undertakings and cross-disciplinary, design-thinking methodologies.
I don’t think it is premature to conclude that this is the single most significant change in the College of Fine Arts since its creation 80 years ago.
Excelsior!
Doug Dempster
Dean
