Environmental & Sustainability Initiatives
ArtCenter has championed art and design as a positive force for change in the world for many years, but we officially embarked on a journey to bring a comprehensive design and sustainability curriculum to the College when our Environmental and Sustainability Initiatives program was launched in 2008.
The mission of our Environmental and Sustainability Initiatives program is to prepare creative professionals with the ability and will to contribute to sustainable development. Some students will create for social impact, some will become communicators and champions of biodiversity, some will innovate new and better ways to use resources. Others will provide solutions for safety, mobility, aging, housing. Still others will invent things we can’t even imagine-with sustainability as a priority.
Given the impact of our graduates and their influence on life on this planet, our unique, pedagogical approach is clear: provide learning and an environment that is fully integrated with sustainability principles, in what we teach, how we teach, and the example we set.
Heidrun Mumper-Drumm
A former engineer, Mumper-Drumm teaches, conducts research and advocates for sustainability campus-wide.
Sustainability Studio
Professor James Meraz pushes the boundaries of how students think about sustainable design.
Exploring the Afterlife of a Product
Aquarium of the Pacific: Project Coastal Crisis
Product design-led studio focusing on public education and action strategies to address the crisis of sea level rise, in partnership with the Aquarium of the Pacific.
Denhart Family Sustainability Scholarship Prize
The Denhart Prize supports the College's developing curriculum in comprehensive design and fosters environmental responsibility and a commitment to social good.
Parallel to our focus on education, efforts were made to conform operations with this new social, environmental and economic model. Not surprisingly, this accomplished some things and left others ‘to be determined.’ There is a realization that progress toward the resilience model must move more quickly and be made more explicit. Of note, this past decade has revealed the significant role of creative professionals in proposing systems of service capable of meeting future challenges.
Together with educational and industry partners, ArtCenter can look to this next decade of achievement as one in which artists and designers participate fully in making sustainable development possible. More skillfully, more courageously, and more successfully.
