Educators and administrators throughout the United States and Canada recently traveled to Pratt Institute’s Brooklyn campus to participate in the 2017 AICAD (Association of Independent Colleges of Art and Design Schools) Annual Conference, which was held from June 14-16. This year’s theme was Student Success, a subject that concerns those in academic and administrative roles throughout the pipeline of student engagement, from application to alumni status.
Nearly 200 participants from areas ranging from academic, alumni, and student affairs to admissions, career services, and technology attended the conference, which offered more than 50 sessions on topics such as “Implementing an LBGTQ Safe Zone Training on Campus;” “Dialogical Model for Studio Critiques in Design Education;” and “Integrating Entrepreneurship Education and Opportunities for Student Success.”
The opening keynote speaker was Scott Barry Kaufman, a cognitive psychologist and author of How Understanding Imaginative Intelligence Can Help Us to Enhance Student Success. Closing keynote speakers were Robert Rauschenberg Foundation’s Director of Philanthropy Risë Wilson and AICAD’s Executive Director Deborah Obalil on the topic of “Student.Artist. Citizen: Addressing How a 21st-Century Art Education Can Produce Creative Thinkers Who Are Genuinely Grounded in the Larger Social Context of Our Times.”
AICAD is a nonprofit consortium of 42 leading art and design schools in the United States and Canada whose mission is to help strengthen its member colleges, and to inform the public about these colleges and the value of studying art and design. Pratt Institute is an AICAD member.