PRATT HOSTS INTERNATIONAL SUSTAINABILITY SUMMIT 
Thursday, August 26, 2010 at 01:24PM
Gateway Editors

Leaders will explore the future of design education through collaboration

 

Pratt Institute will bring together representatives from 40 colleges of art and design from across North America to begin building a strategic plan for integrating environmental sustainability education into art and design programs, and for making art and design schools more sustainable institutions.

The Pratt Academic Leadership Summit on Sustainability (PALSS) will focus on three themes—the future of design education, curricula for a new generation of artists and designers, and strategies for organizational change.

The event takes place from September 29 through October 2, 2010 at Pratt’s Manhattan Campus and the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum in Manhattan.

Summit fellows have been appointed by the presidents of their institutions to participate in the collaborative effort. They will work together to share resources, offer insights, and present case studies that will develop knowledge, leadership skills, and build strategies for integrating sustainable design into academic practices. The group will also consider academic sustainability and the strain on academic institutions to keep pace in a world that is built on immediacy and access. Each theme will be shaped and challenged through a series of interactive presentations, peer-to-peer conversations, and themed work sessions.

The purpose of the summit is to provide PALSS fellows with the tools and strategies they need to integrate sustainability into their programs and set the stage for art and design education for the class of 2030.

The fellows will then become members of the PALSS Cohort—an ongoing network that will meet monthly via web conference to continue the dialogue regarding the sustainability of art and design education at independent colleges of art and design.

In June 2011, the cohort will publish a report that will incorporate standards as well as broader issues related to the sustainability of higher education. A key outcome of the publication will be to serve as a model for collaboration that can be replicated by other academic institutions and organizations that would benefit from collaboration across traditional institutional boundaries.

“Right now each institution is working on its own and we’re losing valuable time,” said Debera Johnson, director of PALSS, who leads Pratt’s Center for Sustainable Design Studies as director of sustainability. “To ensure a future for art and design education in the new millennia, we need to move forward from a model of competition to one of collaboration and shared resources. The aim of the PALSS summit is to encourage the integration of sustainability into our programs collectively so we can advance the academic dialogue to the next level.”

Bill Barrett, executive director, Association of Independent Colleges of Art and Design (AICAD), noted that one of the great advantages of a consortium like AICAD is the ability of similar institutions to work together to address critical issues on its campuses. “I am grateful to Pratt for its leadership in gathering key personnel from AICAD schools so we may all learn from each other and improve our sustainability efforts,” added Barrett.

Ariel Muller, associate director of the summit and a sustainability consultant with a master’s degree in business from Bainbridge Graduate Institute, said, “We have already started a dialogue with the PALSS fellows in preparation for the summit and are impressed with the level of engagement and expertise everyone is bringing to the collaboration. Everyone has a strong commitment to finding new ways to work together and accelerate the process of integrating sustainability into design practices.”

The summit is partially funded by the Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education (FIPSE) grant from the U.S. Department of Education and the Association of Independent Colleges Art and Design (AICAD).

Participants include the following colleges of art and design:

Alberta College of Art + Design

Art Academy of Cincinnati

Art Center College of Design

Art Institute of Boston

California College of Arts

California Institute of the Arts

Cleveland Institute of Art

College for Creative Studies

Columbus College of Art & Design

Corcoran College of Art + Design

Cornish College of the Arts

Emily Carr University of Art + Design

Kansas City Art Institute

Laguna College of Art and Design

Lyme Academy College of Fine Arts

Maryland Institute College of Art

Massachusetts College of Art and Design

Minneapolis College of Art and Design

Moore College of Art & Design

Montserrat College of Art

Nova Scotia School of Art & Design

Pacific Northwest College of Art

Parsons The New School for Design

Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts

Pratt Institute

Ontario College of Art & Design

Oregon College of Art & Craft

Otis College of Art and Design

Rhode Island School of Design

Ringling College of Art and Design

School of the Art Institute of Chicago

School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

School of Visual Arts

 

Article originally appeared on Gateway (http://gateway.pratt.edu/).
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