CCA has had a science requirement among its general education courses for more than 10 years. Courses fulfilling this requirement span the natural, material, and computational sciences. As advanced practitioners, CCA faculty and administrators recognize the need for artists and designers to be scientifically literate.
In 2010 CCA hired geologist and environmental scientist Dr. Christine Metzger as a result of its first national tenure-track search for a science faculty. Dr. Metzger has been teaching at the college since fall 2010. Dr. Metzger also served as the Primary Investigator for the NSF’s Exploring Science in the Studio Grant.
Until recently, science courses at CCA, and indeed at most art and design colleges, were developed predominantly to fulfill a General Education requirement and to meet minimum accreditation requirements. Typically, broad introductions to various areas of science have served students across a variety of studio disciplines at art and design colleges. These classes, however, are not always applicable to students’ chosen area of study or anticipated career paths. To make science education more significant to its students, CCA is moving from a compliance model, in which a course simply fulfills a requirement, to a mission-driven model, in which science courses broaden students’ understanding of their own disciplines and thus become critical components of their education and art and design practice.