Paving New Paths
In 2023, the U.S. Supreme Court ended affirmative action in higher education, driving art and design institutions, including ArtCenter, to find new pathways to recruit diverse students and boost the importance of an art and design education
On a fall day at ArtCenter’s Hillside Campus—with the rolling San Gabriel Mountains stretched out in the distance—high school senior Justin Arrieta checks his portfolio, which includes black-and-white graphite sketches of Spider-Man toys.
Standing in a long line outside a classroom to talk to an ArtCenter Admissions counselor, he is one of more than 700 students who have come to campus for Los Angeles National Portfolio Day, an annual event in which prospective students meet with admissions counselors from 44 art and design colleges from around the country.
“Being here gives me hope,” says Arrieta, a student with the community-based arts education nonprofit Greetings From South-Central L.A. “There's so much I can do, from storyboarding to graphic design. And I can get a job. That helps counter the idea, in my Hispanic community, that you can’t make it in art.”
Until a few weeks ago, Arrieta had never heard of ArtCenter, though he lives just 20 miles away, in South L.A. That’s when he and other Greetings students visited campus for an ArtCenter-organized workshop, Storyboarding for Animation, taught by alum Ainsley Dye (BFA 19), a storyboard artist at Disney TV Animation. For the Portfolio Day event, the Admissions Office provided transportation to campus for high school students from Greetings and two other local arts education nonprofits, Inner-City Arts and Las Fotos Project.
Given the end of affirmative action at colleges and universities—rolling back more than 40 years of race being considered in admissions—building these kinds of bridges from traditionally underserved communities to higher education is not just important, but essential.
How can we provide more access for students from Latinx and Black communities? We want to ensure that lived experience is reflected in our applicants.
Tim CamposArtCenter Vice President of Admissions
Building a pipeline
“The Supreme Court decision places even more emphasis on how important this work of community outreach will continue to be as we move forward,” says newly minted ArtCenter Vice President of Admissions Tim Campos, who previously served as the associate vice president of recruitment and outreach at the College. In his new leadership role, Campos defines himself as “a small statistic as a first-generation college graduate, Chicano and queer.”
“How can we provide more opportunities and access for students from Latinx and Black communities?” he asks, in his office. “We want to ensure that lived experience is reflected in our applicants. We approach our outreach by focusing on cultivation of partnerships, developing recruitment programs addressing issues of access, and informing students from underserved communities about careers related to art and design.”
The Admissions Office’s outreach efforts—such as alumni- and faculty-led workshops at nonprofit community arts organizations and schools in the greater Los Angeles area—provide access and awareness to students from underrepresented backgrounds and build a pipeline for prospective applicants. Such efforts have set a precedent for years to come, Campos says. Also essential is ensuring that prospective students are aware of and have access to potential financial resources to attend the College. ArtCenter administers more than $22 million in scholarships each year.
There is much progress to be made when it comes to boosting representation of Black and Latinx students at the College. As of fall 2022, of ArtCenter’s students, 9% were Hispanic/Latinx, and just 1% were Black. According to 2023 U.S. Census statistics, L.A. County residents are 49% Hispanic/Latinx and 9% Black.
In 2022 and 2023, Admissions—with support from the College’s Alexander and Adelaide Hixon Fund—hosted more than 40 outreach workshops focused on developing relevant art and design skills. These workshops were held on campus, on site, and online for community arts partners that included Heart of Los Angeles (HOLA), Inner-City Arts, Ryman Arts, Self-Help Graphics and Las Fotos Project. And Admissions’ outreach efforts, workshops and partnerships stretch back for more than a decade, adds Campos.
“Through these partnerships, ArtCenter is able to reach students who might not typically have the opportunity otherwise,” says alum Derek Ortega (BFA 18), a visual development artist at Laika Studios (Coraline; Kubo and the Two Strings), who has been teaching workshops such as Visual Storytelling for TV & Film Animation since 2022 for such partners as Inner-City Arts and Ryman Arts. “I find it so rewarding getting to be a helping hand in demystifying what a viable art career looks like.”
For alum Dye, who taught the storyboarding workshop and has been teaching workshops since 2022, diverse voices are critical to storytelling. “Some of the most exciting moments in these workshops are when students tell me how their brains are bursting with ideas for their own stories, characters and worlds, but they weren’t sure there was a career in it,” she says. “To tell them there is and to see their faces light up fills me with a joy I can't put into words.”
Transformative Power of Art and Design
At a time when the percentage of 18- to 24-year-olds choosing to attend college has continued to decline for a number of reasons, including affordability, heightened student loan payments and competitive labor conditions, the impact of art and design remains significant.
“We believe in the transformative power of artists, designers and creative work in a global society,” says Deborah Obalil, president of the Association of Independent Colleges of Art and Design (AICAD), speaking from her office in Providence, Rhode Island. AICAD is a nonprofit consortium of almost 40 specialized art and design schools in the U.S. and Canada, including ArtCenter, which will host the 2024 AICAD Symposium. “Art and design fields influence almost everything we touch and see,” Obalil says.
Diversity—of thought, of background, of perspective—is a core component of having the most rigorous, comprehensive and excellent educational experience possible, she says: “It’s powerful when you see an alum, faculty member or professional who looks like you. Or when you see a successful designer or artist who came from a similar cultural experience. Institutions should have a next-level connection with the communities they engage.”
Obalil says that art and design colleges nationwide are increasing community-based outreach efforts to diversify their applicant pools in response to the Supreme Court’s banning of affirmative action. For many of these AICAD institutions, she says, admissions decision-making is now even more influenced by consideration of an applicant’s life experience along with their portfolio of work.
“What’s important to convey to prospective students is that who they are as a creative is still at the center of what is being evaluated, and that need not be divorced from their experience as an individual based on their race and ethnicity,” says Obalil. “The message needs to be, ‘You don't need to change who you are. You don't need to change your work simply because of this ruling. Students of all backgrounds are welcome at specialized schools of art and design.’”
In general, she says, higher education is at a significant inflection point when it comes to cost. “What is the value of higher education? Who is supposed to pay for it? Is higher education a social good?” she asks. “That conversation is going to come to a head in the next five to 10 years. And awareness of art and design education for younger students is so important, with a different awareness between well-resourced households and lower socioeconomic households of the opportunities available to them.”
Lightbulb effect of awareness
The awareness of art and design higher education can begin as early as elementary school.
Inside the Alyce de Roulet Williamson Gallery at ArtCenter’s Hillside Campus, a class of fourth graders from Altadena Arts Magnet is seated on the floor. The students are surrounded by paintings in the exhibition Advance of the Rear Guard: Ceeje Gallery in the 1960s, about L.A.’s diverse Ceeje Gallery. When teacher Elizabeth Quiroz chants, “Class! Class!” the children quickly respond, “Yes! Yes!”
The students stare up at artist Eduardo Carrillo’s colorful 1966 oil painting Pearly Gates. The two-part conceptual landscape features brick walls and arches, tall trees, red-and-white striped columns and pools of water.
“Do you think this place is real? What do you think it is?” asks tour leader and alum Ruzanna Hanesyan (BFA 21), an art teacher and fiber artist, ceramicist and embroiderer, standing next to the painting. “It’s a circus!” answers one student. “A fairy tale!” shouts another.
The class is one of 16 fourth grade classes from Pasadena Unified School District (PUSD) schools to visit the gallery through My Masterpieces: Discovering Art in My Community, a Pasadena Educational Foundation (PEF) program created in partnership with PUSD and local museums and arts organizations. ArtCenter’s involvement in My Masterpieces is funded by the California Arts Council.
Other ArtCenter and PUSD partnerships include ArtCenter Design Fellows, which introduces PUSD teachers to design-based thinking, and IxD @ App Academy, a collaboration between the College’s Interaction Design department and Pasadena High School's App Academy, a program for future coders and programmers.
“Through these partnerships, our students gain awareness of ArtCenter as part of the fabric of our community,” says PUSD’s Arts and Enrichment Coordinator Karen Anderson. “It exposes them to professional artists and provides a model for college and careers in visual and media arts.”
Students in the Altadena Arts Magnet class at the Ceeje exhibition gleam like lightbulbs as they see up close the work of local artists like Carrillo and Roberto Chavez, whose 1962 painting The Group Shoe is a portrait of four Ceeje Gallery artists. “I love its deep colors,” says one student. After spending time in the gallery, the students file into a classroom to create multimedia collages using watercolor paint and images from magazines. Hanesyan, moving through the room, chats with each student, giving them tips. “It was fun looking at the art!” says an energetic student with sparkly blue nails, who had never heard of ArtCenter before the field trip. “I like that we saw what the artists made with their own hands.”
“It’s exciting being with these students and sharing the experience I had when I first visited ArtCenter,” says Hanesyan. “This space is also so dear to me as an alum.” Quiroz, creating her own collage, praises this opportunity, especially for students of hers whose families are not able to afford traveling to museums and galleries. “They may see art as more of a hobby, so for them to realize that they can make a career out of it is special—that they can not only survive, but thrive,” she says. “College is not this far-off idea. It's right here in the community.”
Creative pathways and ripple effects
Fifteen miles south of ArtCenter, in busy downtown L.A., students gather at the white-walled and multicolored glass–paneled campus of Inner-City Arts, which provides in-person arts instruction for about 5,000 L.A. Unified School District students each year.
Alum Steve Eastwood (BS 99), an assistant professor in ArtCenter’s continuing education program ArtCenter Extension (ACX), which includes ACX Teens, walks around a large table, looking at sketches of cars. The sketches were created by his Inner-City Arts students in the 10-week ACX Teens course Transportation Design, which covers the basics of automotive design. This course and another Inner-City Arts–based ACX Teens course, Interaction Design, are funded by a grant from Honda, with five Inner-City Arts students guaranteed scholarships—first come, first served—to attend a future ACX Teens course.
“When in doubt, look at your own car,” Eastwood tells the students, as he leans over a sketch of a sleek four-door sedan. “Make the headlights bigger. Leave some white when you’re doing shading.”
For Eastwood, working with a diverse group of high school students and teaching them about transportation design has been fulfilling. He says he was always encouraged by his parents to be a doctor or lawyer, not an artist or designer. “They were Asian parents, and they believed in the starving artist archetype,” he says. “When I was in high school, I didn’t know about this career path. Now I'm getting paid to do a hobby that I love doing. This course opens the door for students to realize, ‘Wow, there's all these other creative paths out there that I can pursue.’”
That has been the case for high school senior Meileen Juarez, who sits next to junior Max Perez-Lopez, whose big headphones are draped around his neck. They met in the course and became fast friends. “This class has given me a glimpse of what I want to do when I'm older,” says Juarez. “I never thought about pursuing art, because I want to be a robotics engineer. But this made me excited for the future, because—who knows?—maybe I can make this a career.”
For Perez-Lopez, Inner-City Arts has provided access to drawing materials he didn’t have growing up, as well as opportunities such as learning about ArtCenter. “I'm an artist, and I visualize things a lot,” he says. “After my first Transportation Design class, I could see the proportions of cars. I thought, ‘I want to understand that further.’”
Making sure that young people know they have options and roads into creative fields is at the heart of the Inner-City Arts mission, says President and CEO Shelby Williams-González, who joined the nonprofit in 2021. She first collaborated with Campos and ArtCenter Admissions when she was executive director of the arts program artworxLA.
“A class and a partnership with a college like ArtCenter elevates the entire experience for our students,” she says. “It makes art school and a profession in the arts achievable and tangible. Community arts partnerships build empowered creative thinkers, and exposing our students to different paths creates a more inclusive environment. When students find what they’re passionate about, they’re unstoppable.”
Williams-González acknowledges that ArtCenter—especially its Hillside Campus, in the hills of Pasadena—has long held a certain mystique, similar to that of West L.A.’s Getty Museum. But student trips to the campus, such as visiting for Portfolio Day, tear down that idea. “It’s about having a sense of belonging in a new space,” she says. “When our students walk on campus, they feel like, ‘This is a cool place, and I can see myself here.’”
As for the Supreme Court’s affirmative action ruling, that scares Williams-González, who has a teenage daughter. Decades ago, affirmative action helped Williams-González get into UC Berkeley. “I feel like we're going backwards, and a lot of folks will not have access to higher ed, which then changes the trajectory of so many other things,” she says. “There are ripple effects.”
At the end of the day, diversity should be the norm, not the exception, she adds. “Why are we still having the firsts?” Williams-González asks. “The first woman to do this, the first Black person to do that. I don't want to be the first anymore of anything. I want our students and young folks to kick the doors down and let the floodgates open.”
We're building a pipeline of success, access, awareness and skills, so there’s more people of color who look like us in the creative economy.
Roosevelt "Rose" Brown"
Alum and Associate Professor
Founder of ArtCenter's Designing Dreams Initiative
Designing dreams and change
Sitting on a bench in a hallway at the Pasadena Convention Center, outside ArtCenter’s Fall 2023 Grad Show showcasing graduating students’ work, Associate Professor Roosevelt “Rose” Brown (BS 95) reflects on opening doors with his Designing Dreams Initiative (DDI). An ArtCenter community engagement program in PUSD schools, the initiative was first funded by grants from the Norris Foundation, then by a grant from the First Congregational Church of Pasadena. Brown’s almost 30-year career as a footwear and product designer has included designing sneakers for Puma, Brooks, Speedo and Nike.
A Black alum and self-professed “sneaker head,” Brown launched the grant-funded program, focused on 10- to 18-year-old Black and Latinx students, in 2022. In the program, he introduces students to the prevalence of design in their lives—from shoes to video games—and to design as a career. As part of the program, Brown also co-leads after-school Sneaker Science workshops. Students are provided with kits that include vacuum-formed shoe uppers, laser-printed templates, and markers and pens with which to develop concepts and build prototypes.
“Our ultimate goal with the Designing Dreams Initiative is to build a pipeline in Pasadena,” says Brown, who pauses to wave to graduating Black ArtCenter students coming up to greet him. “We're building a pipeline of success, access, awareness and skills, so there’s more people of color who look like us in the creative economy. I want to do anything I can to make it easier for these students to get on that pathway to higher education.”
Given his own personal story—a creative kid and teen who grew up in Pasadena and attended multiple Pasadena public schools, but never heard about ArtCenter and discovered it himself in his 20s—Brown is acutely aware of the importance of representation.
“How do you get decision makers to shift from a legacy mindset? How do you create that change?” asks Brown, who notes that the percentage of Black men and women in industrial design remains low. “There’s an opportunity to make people on the outside more aware of what's going on inside those doors.”
The importance of community arts pathways into art and design also includes informing parents, he says. “I remember as a kid hearing my mom say, ‘You can't draw your way to a living,’” Brown says. “She couldn't have been more wrong, but she didn't know.”
For Brown, there’s power in public school students of color seeing a Black man at the front of the classroom, and the possibilities that brings. There’s a sense of pride when students tell their friends and parents about work they’ve created in the program. Brown calls it “the joy of knowing.”
“I wish I’d had this program when I was 14,” he says. “Teachers I’ve worked with tell me, ‘I've never seen these students be so attentive.’ I say, ‘The secret sauce is simple. These students have never seen anyone who looks like them stand in front of this classroom and talk about this.’”
“It is so hard to catch what you cannot see,” Brown adds. “That's the vision for this program—that these students can start to see a dream that they can catch.”
