Meet Chair Brenda Laurel

I’m proud to serve as chair for the Graduate Program in Design at CCA. The program’s transdisciplinary nature reflects the world we live in as well as the world we will create. It is an acknowledgment that the complexities and interdependencies of design today call for approaches and practices that transcend the customary labels and boundaries.

This is an idea I’ve believed in for much of my career as a designer, producer, researcher, and educator.

Faculty

I’m delighted to work with faculty whose individual histories and practices embody this transdisciplinary ideal and who continually participate in developing the program’s vision and values. We share a notion of design as not merely responsive, but also protean. We see design as a wellspring of popular culture and as a profound influencer of human values and actions. Our Pro Council—including some of the leading thinkers, designers, entrepreneurs, and humanitarians of our day—helps to shape our vision and steer our course.

Curriculum

Our curriculum does not stand still. Just as our world and our profession exhibit continual change, the educational vision that guides us reaches forward to embrace important trends and acute needs; for example, growing emphasis on sustainability, sophisticated strategic thinking, emergent systems, and cutting-edge design research methods.

Our program’s heritage is the Grad Design MFA, originally founded a decade ago by renowned graphic designer Lucille Tenazas, and led by Stuart McKee upon Lucille’s departure. Faculty member Martin Venezky was also one of the founders of the original program and serves on the program’s current Core Committee.

When CCA hired me in 2006, my mandate was to manifest a new vision of graduate design education at the college. The new program would involve other disciplines, most notably 3D and interaction design, in a holistic curriculum. In my previous work as founding chair of the Media Design Program at Art Center, I had developed a strong affinity for transdisciplinary work, and I was delighted to welcome 3D into the mix at CCA.

When the current program launched in 2007, its emphasis on transdisciplinarity, design research, entrepreneurship, and collaborative work made it unique in the landscape of graduate design education. Much of the quality of the program stems from its flexibility and foresight in addressing the changing world within and for which we design. The program continues to be unique, not only in its educational offering, but also in the excellence of its students, their projects, and the work they do after graduation.

Of all the adventures of my personal career, leading the Graduate Program in Design at CCA is the capstone. It enables me to draw upon lived experience to prepare students for careers in changing landscapes, surrounds me with brilliant colleagues and partners, and allows me to teach and to learn with extraordinary students from across disciplines and around the world.