Exploring Science in the Studio at California College of the Arts
California College of the Arts (CCA), one of the oldest and most influential art and design schools in the country, is pursuing ways to enable its students to take their places as scientifically literate problem-solvers in a variety of careers. CCA launched the Exploring Science in the Studio pilot program in 2011, offering a set of interdisciplinary thematic studios, called Science in the Studio, in the college’s principal areas of study—architecture, design, fine arts, humanities and sciences, and diversity studies—allowing faculty to embed guest scientists directly into the studio courses.
As the recipient of a 2012 grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF), one of the largest awards made to an art and design college, CCA was able to expand the Exploring Science in the Studio initiative to include two additional initiatives. The grant enabled the creation of Mobile Units for Science Exploration (MUSE), which allow instructors to bring science equipment directly into the studios. The MUSE provide a replicable model for bringing science instructional materials and equipment directly into classrooms at colleges that do not have stand-alone science departments or facilities. Lastly, the NSF’s Exploring Science in the Studio grant supported the 2015 AICAD Symposium, which brings educational partners from around the country together to address the theme “Exploring Science in the Studio” in hopes that changing science curriculum at art and design colleges will continue to provide more meaningful opportunities for students to expand their scientific literacy.
Chair and Associate Professor, Furniture
California College of the Arts
Russell Baldon’s work is concerned with elements of wonder and how we receive information from the world around us. We gather visual information from many objects, including windows, chalkboards, mirrors, and books. These are all areas he continues to focus his work on. He believes that a sense of wonder is a basic component of what makes us human and is at the core of our relationship to each and every thing in our life.
Assistant Professor, Critical Studies
California College of the Arts
Christine Metzger is California College of the Arts’ first tenure-track assistant professor of Earth and Environmental Science. Dr. Metzger is currently a co-principal investigator for a three-year, interdisciplinary $200,000 National Science Foundation grant, Exploring Science in the Studio, which funds continued efforts to embed scientists into the studio curriculum. She is also the developer of many interdisciplinary courses that bring science to arts and design students, such as “Bad Science at the Movies,” which is an introductory geology class as seen via the lens of Hollywood disaster movies, and “Life on Earth through Time,” a history of four billion years of life history that incorporates illustration and other creative work with science.
Associate Director of Libraries
California College of the Arts
Teri Dowling began at California College of the Arts as the Fine Arts librarian on the San Francisco campus in 2010, and she was recently appointed associate director of Libraries. She now manages public services and collections for libraries on both CCA campuses. Her subject specialties are contemporary art and art theory and the sciences. Dowling began her career as a biologist, earning a BS in Biology from University of California, Irvine. In 2002 she completed her MFA in sculpture at CCA, and she finished her MLIS at San Jose State in 2009.
ALLAN WEXLER
Assistant Professor, School of Constructed Environments
Parsons the New School for Design
Allan Wexler has worked in the fields of architecture, design, and fine art for forty-five years. He is represented by the Ronald Feldman Gallery in New York and teaches in the School of Constructed Environments at Parsons the New School for Design. Wexler’s works explore human activity and the built environment. He works as an investigator using series, permutations, and chance rather than searching for definitive solutions. He makes buildings, furniture, vessels, and utensils as backdrops and props for everyday, ordinary human activity. His works isolate, elevate, and monumentalize our daily rituals: dining, sleeping, and bathing. They, in turn, become mechanisms that activate ritual, ceremony, and movement, turning these ordinary activities into theater.
