Savannah College of Art and Design

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The Savannah College of Art and Design (often referred to as SCAD), founded in 1978 by Paula S. Wallace, Richard Rowan, May Poetter and Paul Poetter, is an independent, accredited, and nonprofit school dedicated to the visual and performing arts, design, the building arts, and the history of art and architecture. Located in the charming, historic, southern city of Savannah, Georgia, SCAD is the largest art school in the United States and offers Bachelor of Fine Arts, Master of Architecture, Master of Arts, and Master of Fine Arts degrees. The college is closely engaged with the city and the the preservation, at least architecturally, of its rich heritage.

SCAD enrolls close to 7,000 students from all 50 states and almost 80 different countries. International student enrollment is quoted at 10%.

The college offers 23 majors (advertising design, animation, architectural history, architecture, art history, broadcast design and motion graphics, fashion, fibers, film and television, furniture design, graphic design, historic preservation, illustration, industrial design, interactive design and game development, interior design, media and performing arts, metals and jewelry, painting, photography, sequential art, sound design, and visual effects) and 40 minors.

The college also features study-abroad campuses in the scenic towns of Lacoste, France, Horncastle, England and, as of 2005, a campus in the more metropolitan city of Atlanta, Georgia called SCAD Atlanta.

Contents

1 Facilities 2 Faculties 3 Students 4 Events 5 Alumni and Faculty 6 Quick Facts 7 External links

Facilities

The college's first academic building was the Savannah Volunteer Guard Armory, which was purchased and renovated in 1979. Built in 1892, the Romanesque Revival red brick structure is included in the National Register of Historic Places. Expanding rapidly, the school went on to purchase more buildings in Savannah's downtown Historic and Victorian districts, restoring old and often derelict buildings that had exhausted their original functions.

By restoring buildings for use as college facilities and as part of the Historic Preservation major of study, the college has been recognized by the American Institute of Architects, the National Trust for Historic Preservation, the Historic Savannah Foundation and the Victorian Society of America among others. The college campus now consists of 60 buildings spaced informally throughout the grid and park system of Savannah's downtown. Many buildings are located on the famous 24 squares of the old town which are laden with monuments, live oaks, horse buggy tours and an undeniable southern gothic feel that is sought by the many movies filmed there.

Features located on or near the campus buildings include the Riverfront Plaza and Factors' Walk—River Street's restored nineteenth-century cotton warehouses and passageways include shops, bars and restaurants and City Market—Savannah's restored central market features antiques, souvenirs, and small eateries.

The college's facilities in Lacoste, France date back five to six hundred years. Originally founded by Bernard Pfriem, an American artist, in the 1970's and called the Lacoste School of Arts, the small town of about 300 permanent inhabitants is steeped in rustic charm and appears almost as a medieval village from a distance. Lacoste is in Provence which is Southern France. The beautiful contryside is an asset to school as an inspiration for the drawing and painting courses taught there. Enrollment in Lacoste is usually for only one quarter of the acedemic school year.

Faculties

The school is divided into seven faculty departments: the School of Building Arts, School of Communication Arts, School of Design, School of Film and Digital Media, School of Fine Arts, School of Liberal Arts, and the School of Media and Performing Arts.

The most popular is the School of Film and Digital media which has seen much growth in recent years with the addition of new majors to support the demand for computer driven art classes. These areas of study focus on computer effects, animation and design for film, television, games and the internet. To meet the demand, a former 64,000-square-foot carriage factory was refurbished as a high-end, 800 computer animation and effects teaching/production house complete with render farm, green screen stages, and even stop-motion labs.

Also very popular and widely recognized is the School of Graphic Design which is located in Poetter Hall on Madison Square, the college's original building and the former 36,248-square-foot Guard Armory. As one of the college's older schools, it still embraces the trend in electronic design and features a large numbers of computers and several high end apple computer workstations in its labs.

Students

Most students live off campus, which is to say outside the dorms since there is no formal campus grounds other than those contained by the building properties themselves. There are seven buildings that provide student housing and range from two person single room dorms to four student apartment style living. SCAD has no fraternities or sororities.

The college has two newspapers, The Campus Chronicle and the student run District. Student media also extends to an internet broadcast radio station and a student run net, the Hive. There are 23 student organizations related to academic programs and another 16 that are recognized, but not affiliated with any particular programs.

Though Fridays are generally considered independent study days, Thursday evenings often ends up being a popular social nights in the absence of a fifth day of classes.

Students are expected to focus on three areas of study: foundations (the art fundamentals of drawing, color theory, design, etc.), liberal arts (the math, science, art history, and english need for accreditation) and their major area of discipline (the specific course of study like Graphic Design, Sequential Art). The foundations are strongest in drawing courses; the liberal arts in art history of which at least five are usually required.

Events

The college operates a dozen galleries, notable ones including: the Red Gallery, the Savannah Gallery, the Pei Ling Chan Gallery, the Pinnacle Gallery, and The Earle W. Newton Center for British-American Studies. In addition, the college holds several lectures, performances, and film screenings at two historic theaters: the Trustees Theater and the Lucas Theater for the Arts. These theaters are also used once a year for the popular Savannah Film Festival in Late October, early November. The average attendance is over 25,000 and involves a week of lectures, workshops and screenings of student and professional films. There is also a juried competition.

Outdoors there is the Sidewalk Arts Festival which garners huge crowds in Spring around Savannah's largest downtown park, Forsyth. The festival is primarily about the chalk drawing competition which is divided into group and individual categories of students, alumni and prospective students. Similar in spirit is the Sand Arts Festival which is held also in spring on the nearby beeches of Tybee Island. The competition is divided into sand relief, sand sculpture and sand castle divisions.

Individual departments host both yearly (like the anual SCAD Fashion Show) and quarterly shows (Animation) to promote student work.

Students tend to frequent in mass non-SCAD affiliated events if they are held in the historic downtown like the Savannah Jazz Festival and the Savannah Shakespeare Festival (both in Forsyth Park), not to mention the St. Patrick's Day celebration which is by far the biggest. messiest yearly event in town and the highlight of spring break North of Daytona beech.

Alumni and Faculty

Quick Facts

• The colors are black and gold.
• The mascot is Art the Bee.
• SCAD is accredited by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools.
• SCAD is on the quarter system. Typical workload is three classes a quarter.
• School is 4 days a week, with individual classes held every other day. Friday is reserved for independent study to allow more time on the weekends to complete projects.
• Classes run 2.5 hours with one 10 to 15 minute break usually. The extended length is to accommodate studio classes where traditionally scheduling would seem rushed.
• SCAD is primarily located in the historic district of Savannah.
• All classes require a field trip.
• Most classes are small at under 20 students, with that number decreasing in higher level courses to only a handful.
• Spring break at SCAD is timed to coincide with St. Patrick's Day. The St. Patrick's Day celebration in Savannah is second only to the one in Chicago and, no, they don't dye the river green.

External links

• Savannah College of Art and Design website (http://www.scad.edu/)
• SCAD in Lacoste, France (http://www.scad.edu/lacoste/)
• SCAD in Atlanta, Georgia (http://www.scad.edu/atlanta/)
• SCAD Exhibitions (http://www.scadexhibitions.com/)
• The Campus Chronicle (http://www.thecampuschronicle.com/)
• District (Student Newspaper) (http://www.thecampuschronicle.com/)
• SCAD Radio (http://www.scadradio.org/)
• Sand Arts Festival (http://www.scad.edu/sandarts/)
• Sidewalk Arts Festival (http://www.scad.edu/saf/)
• Savannah Film Festival (http://www.scad.edu/filmfest/)