By Travis Walters
President Wallace took office 10 years ago this month, and in this past decade the university has grown tremendously. Would SCAD approach 10,000 students 31 years after it started? President Wallace couldn’t have imagined it.
“I thought it would be a small, specialized school,” she said.
SCAD Atlanta, Lacoste, Hong Kong and eLearning all came online under her supervision; the Fashion Show, Savannah Film Festival and Sidewalk Arts Festivals are some of the events she’s nurtured. The success comes, she says, from the students. Alumni leave SCAD and tell other people about it.
“I’ve had employers come back to me and say, ‘give me another student just like that one,'” she said.
Before co-founding SCAD she worked in children’s education. She thought the same ideas that existed there would help post-secondary education. SCAD was founded in Poetter Hall, and the rest, as they say, is history.
Her day-to-day activities vary. One day she can be choosing student work for a gallery, working on a speech, preparing for board meetings or the next day can be spent on a single project. Or, as is the case when she’s working on the weekends, she can be a guide when tourists randomly knock on her door.
She also travels to promote SCAD, as she did recently when she visited Hong Kong to open the first permanent art gallery for SCAD Hong Kong.
She is very surprised by the reaction to Hong Kong. “Students who’re graduating have told me they wish they weren’t so they could go, and veteran faculty want to go,” she said. Operating multiple campuses doesn’t worry her so long as SCAD stays true to its mission.
Listening to students and what they want has led SCAD to success.
“The Fashion department started because a student from Miami came to me and said we should start one,” said Wallace. She wasn’t convinced initially, but the student persisted so SCAD offered a class in fashion. It took off and now Fashion is one of the biggest departments at SCAD.
The university continues to grow each year, and with that comes new challenges and opportunities. With the success of past events, SCAD launched many new events over the last year, like deFINE ART. “I wanted to create something to focus on fine arts,” said Wallace.
The event was a great success and will continue in the future. Other events on the horizon that she’s focused on is the NAAB re-accreditation starting April 10, and the launch of the new Collaborative Learning Center, a product of the successful SACS accreditation process that concluded last month. Students in fashion at SCAD-Atlanta will get their own event this year, a Fashion Salon, that will let students present their work in a merchandised environment to designers and other industry professionals. They’ll stand with their work and receive feedback and comment on it.
Financial turmoil gripped the nation at the end of the decade, with education being affected greatly at public and private institutions in every state. SCAD has weathered that crisis fairly well. “We have to anticipate what’s coming. We’ve been awarding more scholarships,” she said.
What will come during the next 10 years can’t be predicted, but we’ll do fine if “we keep focusing on our mission.”
