C Magazine: Richard Rogers

Richard L. Rogers: A 25-Year Legacy at the College for Creative Studies

THE COLLEGE FOR CREATIVE STUDIES has truly prospered as a result of the 25 years of strategic and insightful leadership of President emeritus Rick Rogers (1994–2019) and Chair emeritus Keith Crain (Trustee, 1982–2019; Board Chair, 1993–2019). This special edition of C Magazine is a tribute to their service and shared legacy.

I have spent my entire career in higher education and have experienced the administrations of many presidents. Rick’s thoughtful leadership has not only made CCS a top-choice art and design school for many students but has also championed the cultural and social value of a career in art and design. One need only look to our accomplished alumni and the leadership they bring to their own fields.

Every decision made by Rick — along with his Leadership Team and the College’s Trustees — has been based on an ever-higher standard of quality that enabled CCS to evolve into one of the top art and design schools in the country and in the world. Sometimes these decisions included a considerable element of risk. Rick’s vision and drive to make CCS an anchor institution in art and design education and in our region’s creative economy has proven them to be risks well worth taking. Another important factor was the long-term leadership of Keith Crain. His 25-year partnership with Rick is unheard of in higher education of any era. Together, they catalyzed the College’s evolution.

I have had the honor of leading CCS for a year now, and I am grateful for Rick’s willingness to share his institutional knowledge and experience. I know that I can call him anytime for advice and thoughtful ideas.

Thank you, Rick Rogers and Keith Crain, for your dedication and commitment. And congratulations on a job well done.

Donald L. Tuski, President

In the mid-1990s, Richard Rogers sought a challenging leadership role and CCS sought a leader undeterred by immense challenges. Both needed reinvention. This is the story of how a legacy was built and, most important, of the people, dedication and bold ideas it took to build it.

Construction of the Walter B. Ford II Building and campus expansion, circa 2000.

THE ART OF REINVENTION

Richard L. Rogers and the Emergence of the College for Creative Studies

Walter and Josephine Ford Campus in 2019, with an aerial view of the Josephine F. Ford Sculpture Garden and the Walter B. Ford II Building.

In many ways, the Center for Creative Studies was, in 1994, a perfect storm of problems. Longtime Chairman of the Board of Trustees, Walter B. Ford II, had died in 1991. Wendell W. Anderson, Jr., succeeded Ford as Chair in 1989, and was as deeply committed to the institution as his close friend “Wally.” But troubles were mounting. A new president stirred much controversy on campus during a two-year term. Enrollment was dropping. Deficits were rising. There was a $2 million shortfall on a $12 million budget in 1992. The faculty were divided over CCS’s academic direction. Infrastructure was unstable. In 1993, Keith E. Crain became chairman of the Board, and CCS Trustee Frank Couzens, Jr., took on the role of interim president. Couzens, retired executive vice president of Manufacturers Bank and the son and grandson of two former Detroit mayors, provided stability in the short term while CCS launched a search for a new president.

The Trustees and a dedicated search committee sought a permanent president who could turn the College’s fortunes. Moreover, the City of Detroit had for decades seen a dramatic decline in manufacturing and increases in crime, joblessness and poverty rates — problems that would only worsen in the ensuing years. Financial woes, an unstable infrastructure and a seven-year decline in enrollment in a city with its own seemingly intractable crises: The Center for Creative Studies was troubled but not irretrievable — or so RICHARD ROGERS thought when he accepted the offer in 1994 to become president of the College. Rogers had been an administrator at The New School for Social Research in New York City since 1982 and vice president and secretary since 1990. Among his many accomplishments there, he led team development of the school’s graduate program in theater, offered in conjunction with the famed Actors Studio. He successfully chaired the task force charged with increasing enrollment at The New School’s Eugene Lang College, drafted the university’s policies on freedom of expression and responsible investments, and worked with sculptor Martin Puryear and landscape architect Michael Van Valkenburgh on the redesign of the school’s courtyard, among other architectural projects. Rogers also supervised the curator of The New School’s 700work contemporary art collection, displayed throughout its campus — all signals of his dedication to the arts.

While he had never led an institution, Rogers came to CCS with the experience, perspective and temperament to take on the College’s unique challenges.

KEITH CRAIN , who had been a Trustee since 1982 and became CCS Board chair after Anderson in 1993, told the Detroit Free Press about Rogers’ hiring: “It is as though the head of The New School has been training Richard Rogers for us all those years. This guy has dealt with Trustees. He’s developed an understanding of needs, like how to raise money. He has dealt with faculty and students and staff. He has the wonderful ability to see the glass half full. I have never felt more comfortable about this institution than I do now.

I’m excited for its future.”

Contacted by an executive search firm in January 1994, Rogers was intrigued by the job but apprehensive about Detroit, having followed the national

media’s reports of the city’s problems. He was interested in the next phase of his career and in exploring leadership opportunities with arts-based organizations beyond New York. He and his wife, Susan Thornton Rogers, graphic designer and co-founder of Laundy Rogers Design in New York, agreed that he should undergo the process and take a look at what the College might offer. Rogers remembers how he felt after his first tour of CCS and those early conversations. “I had a really good feeling about it. I was candid with them about the problems the College faced, what they could do to tackle some of them, and they were really receptive,” he said.

Alumnus and Professor CARLOS DIAZ (‘80, Photography) was a member of the CCS search committee and recalls asking Rogers how he might move CCS forward from the school’s then contentious relationship with the surrounding community, another of its mounting issues.

Above: Rick and Susan Thornton Rogers. Opposite: Students gather in front of the Yamasaki Building.

“It seemed as if there had to be some changes,” Diaz said. “So, I asked Rick [Rogers] about it. And his response was that he started with the notion that we were already a great school. He spoke at length about his vision that CCS could be much better connected to the community and the fact that he saw the community as an important partner and resource. I thought it was a great answer.”

After his second visit, Rogers’ interest in the position was heightened. “I was very much attracted to the people I met. It sounds like a cliché,” he recalled, “but they were interesting and seemed committed to addressing the institution’s problems. I realized that there was a lot of opportunity in Detroit, too. The city had a lot of problems, but the impressions one got of it through the national media were very distorted. I started thinking that the problems CCS was facing were solvable.

“I also felt that there was an opportunity to become involved in the life and revitalization of the city,” Rogers continued. The search committee and Trustees invited Rogers for a third and final visit — this time with Susan. “She was open to the prospect, and we both wanted a situation where we could spend more time with our daughters, Caroline (age 13 at the time) and Meredith (age 10), and do less commuting. So we accepted the invitation. And in very subtle and thoughtful ways they made not only the job and the institution but also the whole community seem like a very inviting place — a place where we would want to be.” At the end of the third visit, CCS offered Rogers the role.

“We were at the airport on the way back to New York, and Susan said to me, ‘You have to take this job.’”

Big Challenges, Early Victories

When Rogers and his family moved to metro Detroit in late summer 1994, he had already begun to learn about many of CCS’s — and the city’s — problems. After touring metro Detroit during the interview process, he continued to have conversations with faculty, staff and Trustees, including Crain and Couzens. He also sought the counsel of friend Neil Hoffman, former president of

the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and president of what was then the California College of Arts and Crafts. CCS enrollment, which was then 769 students (671 FTE) had been declining for nearly a decade, would be one key to addressing the College’s financial troubles, so Rogers took Hoffman’s advice and hired an enrollment consulting firm.

he made me chair of the Photography department. As a faculty member I, like many others, was just not very happy about how the school was supporting us teaching in the classrooms. There didn’t seem to be a connectedness between administration and faculty. So all of the things that the administration does for faculty — all of those tentacles that have to connect one branch to the other —

His roster of challenges also included persistent divisions among faculty and a lack of uniform professional standards.

A committee of instructors had attempted to create a faculty handbook but after three years had produced no real results. Rogers wanted to build upon CCS’s faculty and expand its national and international reputation. But he also wanted to create a sense of unity and shared expectations.

“In the period before he got here, things had really started to unravel,” Diaz recalled. “When Rick arrived,

seemed to be severing as the years went on. And I think things reached a tipping point. The students knew that something was wrong. I think the students started to look around and see the kinds of resources they had, or didn’t have.”

Prior to Rogers’ arrival, faculty had not routinely received performance reviews, salary increases were rare and dispensed without regard to merit or achievement, and some faculty members not only had no training in higher education but had no degrees in the disciplines they taught.

Opposite: View of the Josephine F. Ford Sculpture Garden and the Kresge-Ford Building (rear). This page: Portraits by Professor emerita Nancy Mitter of Walter Buhl Ford II (“Wally”), 30-year chair of the CCS Board of Trustees, and his wife, philanthropist Josephine F. Ford, the College’s single greatest benefactor.

“Rick spoke at length about his vision that CCS could be much better connected to the community and the fact that he saw the community as an important partner and resource.”

— Carlos Diaz

Students were not offered foundational, or core, courses; they entered their chosen majors in freshman year (not unusual) but received no training in agreed-upon skills (unusual).

“Other than enrollment, the biggest issue was faculty dissension and a kind of general unsettledness within the institution,” Rogers said. “Frank Couzens had done a lot to calm that down. But even though I was welcomed warmly and I was the choice of the institution to lead it, there was still a lot of apprehension around a new president coming in. The faculty seemed very factionalized, and I knew I would have to deal with that, but the main thing was to make sure the educational process was continuing in an effective manner.”

A visit in the previous year from accrediting body North Central Association of Colleges and Schools (NCA) had found general course quality to be good but found infrastructure lacking and faculty dissension problematic. The association gave CCS three years to fix the problems or risk losing accreditation.

Rogers started attending the Faculty Assembly meetings, a habit he maintained until his retirement in 2019 but one that was initially met with trepidation by many instructors. He cites a number of faculty and staff who helped him make sense of those early days. Diaz and DR. MARY M c NICHOLS sat on the first committee for a faculty contract. Industrial Design Instructor CLYDE FOLES served as Acting Dean of the College. Former

CFO SUE SLACK walked Rogers through the College’s financial situation, and art historian DR. DOROTHY KOSTUCH stepped in to lead the Liberal Arts department upon the departure of the former chair. Sculptor JOSEPH WESNER and glass artist HERB BABCOCK helped him understand the local arts community.

And KATHY GRENDA , the registrar who had been given the responsibility of overseeing Admissions and Financial Aid, was not only a well of much-needed optimism, she helped Rogers identify JULIE HINGELBERG , then director of the one-person Computer Services department for the entire College, as the ideal person to head up Financial Aid.

Hingelberg had arrived at CCS in 1990, four years before Rogers. “There weren’t budgets by department when I first got here,” said Hingelberg, now vice president for Enrollment and Student Services. “I was hired as director of Computer Services, but my office had no phone. I didn’t have a desk, but I had

a folding table and a plastic chair but no computer,” she said, chuckling.

“Rick came in and eventually formed a Leadership Team. He brought in Anne [ANNE BECK , now vice president for Administration and Finance], and then we started having budgets, and we started to function as a professional institution rather than as a little community arts school.”

A year into Rogers’ tenure, enrollment increased to 850 students. This upward trend would continue until Rogers’ retirement. Stronger “tentacles” emerged between the administration and faculty and tensions, gradually, began to ease. Students relayed their renewed sense of optimism to faculty and staff. The Center for Creative Studies was moving forward.

A few months after the January 1995 strategic planning meeting, attended by more than 100 faculty and staff, Rogers wrote a note of thanks to the CCS community.

“A strategic plan is about the future, but I think it also helps to reflect on the immediate past because it gives us a sense of how great CCS’s potential is and how much we can accomplish together. The last 12 months have brought CCS a lot of good news. We have made a great deal of progress. The reason for that is very clear. It is because so many people have worked hard to make this a better place,

to intensify the focus on educating and serving our students, to make CCS financially stable, and to create a spirit of collaboration and common purpose in all that we do.”

This burgeoning “spirit of collaboration and common purpose” had indeed produced remarkable progress in Rogers’ first year. Enrollment increased by 11 percent with a 40-percent increase in new students — the largest ever in the College’s history. The budget was balanced for the first time in a decade, full-time employees, who now had three-year contracts, received salary increases, and CCS adopted a “new, rational and fair” salary schedule and standardized hiring procedures. Computer labs were upgraded, with new computer equipment installed for academic programs. Early in Rogers’ second year, key CCS events, including the Detroit International Wine Auction (DIWA) — the College’s largest fundraiser — and the CCS exhibit at the North American International Auto Show (NAIAS) received corporate sponsorship for the first time. General Motors sponsored DIWA, thanks to Trustee Alphonse S. Lucarelli, who with his late wife Maria chaired the wine auction in Rogers’ second and third years. Over time,

GM would become the College’s largest corporate supporter.

“There were many, many people on campus who really wanted to work together to make it happen,” Rogers said, “and that was always encouraging to me. I was getting positive reinforcement from Trustees, colleagues on campus and people in the community that helped me believe that we could, somehow, get it done.” But there was still much to accomplish. Rogers wanted to develop stronger and more expansive community programming — a commitment that was subsequently written into the College’s mission. The growing school pushed existing classroom and office space to the limit. And the campus, such as it was, still lacked adequate parking, cohesion and curb appeal, which posed a problem for visitors, who often had no idea they had arrived at CCS.

In the next few years, however, CCS would begin to come into its own: its academic programming would continue to evolve, acquiring industry-standard resources for students and leaning more and more into the emergence of digital media. And generous Trustee and donor gifts would bolster capital campaigns and grow the school’s endowment significantly, making dramatic physical expansion possible.

Opposite, clockwise: Student Exhibition Opening in the General Motors Auditorium in the Taubman Center. Julie Hingelberg, vice president for Enrollment and Student Services, Anne Beck, vice president for Administration and Finance. Sandra Wilson, executive assistant to the President, Rick Rogers and Brigette Neal, administrative assistant. This page: Keith Crain, Board chair; Frank Couzens, Jr., interim president; Norman Peslar, Board vice chair and chair of the Presidential Search Committee; and Wendell W. Anderson, Jr., chair emeritus

Nonprofit institutions depend on philanthropy in order to thrive. Charitable gifts make the difference between an organization that is ordinary and one that is special. Richard Rogers has remarked that he doesn’t think it appropriate to say that organizations “raise” money. Donors give money out of generosity, a sense of responsibility and a belief in an organization’s mission. Institutions make a case; donors decide.

During the 25 years of Rogers’ presidency, CCS benefited from an extraordinary level of generosity — from small donations to multi-million-dollar gifts — from Trustees, alumni and other individuals, and from corporations and foundations. These gifts were key to all that was achieved during his tenure. “Philanthropy turns vision into reality,” said Rogers.

Chief among the donors was Josephine F. Ford, whose $50 million bequest enlarged CCS’s endowment and put it on a financial footing that enabled the big projects that followed. It is still the largest single gift ever made to a private college of art and design. Her $22 million in capital gifts before that launched the creation of what is now CCS’s Walter and Josephine Ford Campus. And these are just the most significant of the countless other gifts she and her husband Walter B. Ford II made to CCS. The Ford family’s association with CCS dates back to Eleanor Clay Ford’s service on the Board in the early years of the institution. During Rogers’ tenure, many members of the family continued to

be major donors. They were joined by other prominent supporters like Alfred Taubman and his family, Richard and Jane Manoogian, General Motors, the Ford Motor Company Fund, Lear Corporation, the Benson and Edith Ford Fund, the Kresge Foundation, and so many more. A remarkable 43 donors made cumulative gifts totaling $1 million and above between 1994 and 2019.

In “raising” funds, CCS also benefited from strong advocacy by Trustees and others. People like Keith Crain, Wendell Anderson, Heinz Prechter, Alphonse Lucarelli, Alfred Taubman, David Fischer and Steve Hamp, as well as the individuals and couples who chaired the Detroit International Wine Auction, not only gave generously but also encouraged — even implored — others to give. Their efforts had a profound impact on the College’s growth and progress.

Speaking in 2012 to the Taubman Center campaign

donors, Rogers commented on the importance of philanthropy. He said: “Institutions are embedded in communities. For institutions to thrive, their communities need to be healthy. That places a serious responsibility on institutions like CCS to contribute to the well-being of their communities and to earn their trust and confidence. Charitable gifts are statements of confidence, expressions of belief in the value that an institution adds to its community. What makes me most proud about this campaign is not the amount of money we raised or the amount of square footage we added, but the amount of confidence that all of you expressed in the College.”

Such confidence — expressed repeatedly through the years by many, many donors — truly enabled CCS to thrive.

— Richard Rogers

“Institutions are embedded in communities. For institutions to thrive, their communities need to be healthy. That places a serious responsibility on institutions like CCS to contribute to the well-being of their communities and to earn their trust and confidence. Charitable gifts are statements of confidence, expressions of belief in the value that an institution adds to its community.”

Opposite: The 38th Detroit International Wine Auction Co-Chair James M. Nicholson, Chair of the CCS Board of Trustees since 2019.

In this frank, funny and wide-ranging conversation, Rick Rogers and Keith Crain reflect on how and why they each joined CCS, what distinguishes the College from other art and design schools, and what it takes to keep a 25-year partnership thriving.

Left to right: Rick Rogers, City of Detroit Mayor Dennis Archer (1993—2001) and Board Chair Keith Crain on the CCS campus, circa late 1990s.

THE ART OF PARTNERSHIP

THE ART OF PARTNERSHIP

“If You Leave, I Leave”

On the eve of their respective retirements in summer 2019, President Rick Rogers and Board Chair Keith Crain reflected on the College and their 25-year partnership.

When RICHARD ROGERS joined what was then the Center for Creative Studies as president in 1994, he was taking the reins of an institution that had experienced its share of turmoil but that also enjoyed a good local reputation and was a leading producer of designers for the auto industry. The College was burdened with aging and inadequate facilities, steadily declining enrollment, a perennial deficit and a faculty divided by the previous administration, among other woes.

A member of the Michigan Journalism Hall of Fame and a 2014 inductee into the Automotive Hall of Fame — an honor recognizing his considerable contributions to the industry — KEITH CRAIN became chair of CCS’s Board of Trustees a year before Rogers’ arrival. As a young man, Crain had transformed his abiding interest in cars into a groundbreaking and profitable expansion of his family’s publishing enterprise, which purchased the ailing 46-year-old tabloid Automotive News in 1970. Crain was “not only familiar with the internal workings of cars,” one journalist wrote, “but soon demonstrated an innate sense of how a trade magazine about vehicles should be written, edited and marketed.”

He added AutoWeek — Crain Communications’ first consumer periodical — to the company’s roster in 1977 and became publisher and editor-in-chief of Crain’s Detroit Business upon that publication’s launch in 1985. The company’s expansion into global automotive publishing in the 1990s paralleled the rapidly expanding globalization of the auto industry. Keith Crain became chairman of Crain Communications in 1997, and has led an immensely successful publishing enterprise — encompassing U.S. and international business, advertising and automotive industries. Crain Communications’ 23 brands reach more than six million consumers and decision makers across U.S., European and Asian markets. He remains one of the most influential figures in publishing, journalism and the auto industry, routinely expressing his deeply knowledgeable — and passionate — views across regional, national and international media. In 2019, CCS awarded Crain an honorary doctorate.

As CCS Board chair, Crain remembers the early 1990s at the College as familial, if financially precarious. Although his immediate predecessor

Wendell Anderson, Jr., had stepped up as CCS Board chair during a particularly challenging era in the College’s history, the death of designer and champion of the arts Walter Buhl Ford II in 1991 had not only been personally devastating but had also exposed the College’s raw edges. By 1994, new leadership couldn’t arrive soon enough for a college whose identity crisis routinely made the local papers.

In 2020, however, the College for Creative Studies (CCS) boasts a national and international reputation. Enrollment has doubled, the industry-standard facilities are enviable and LinkedIn ranked CCS the number three design school in the United States for alumni success.

During the two-and-ahalf decades of his tenure as president, Rogers demonstrated that the key to good leadership is good partnership: with faculty and staff, foundation and industry leaders, the local community and what Keith Crain once called “one of the best boards in Michigan.” Crain’s own relationship with Rogers remains remarkable not only for its harmonious sense of the College’s legacy but also for the mutual respect, and friendship, the two men share.

What follows is a conversation between Keith Crain and Rick Rogers, six months before both men retired from CCS, reflecting

New York, and I gave him the best sales job I ever did. [laughter] And his wife was reluctant to come to Detroit. She said, ‘It’s a great job, but it’s in Detroit,’ which is kind of what my wife said when I proposed to her, and she was in Chicago. In spite of all that, we wined and dined her and got her to enthusiastically endorse his job offer. What were your first impressions of Rick Rogers? What made him stand out?

KC: He had all the right stuff. That’s what I would say. He was learning the role with an unbelievably fine school in Manhattan. And I think I recognized that, and I convinced him that it was time for him to be the boss.

Is that the key to being a good Board chair? Not getting in the way of the president?

KC: You do get involved, but you get involved in a supportive manner, not in an I’m-going-to-run-it-myself way. I was running a business. I was running a very sensitive, editorially oriented global company. So I had my own issues, which Rick had to inherit, as I said. He never said to me, ‘Why the hell did you do that? You just made my life miserable.’ I may never have made his life miserable, or I may have made it miserable all the time. I don’t know. He never said or complained to me. And I never complained to him about what was going on.

on the nature of their unique working relationship. At one point Crain observes, “Whether you’re in the publishing business or the college business, it doesn’t matter. You get the right people, everything hums.”

Keith Crain: I was at a cocktail party and Wally [Walter B. Ford II] said, ‘You’re the publisher of Automotive News. You should be on the Board of the Center for Creative Studies.’ That was his criterion. And I said, ‘Okay, what do I have to do? And he said, ‘It’s been done.’ Kind of like ‘Hi!’ Did you have any hesitation when he asked you to join the Board?

KC: No, no. It sounded like fun. [ grins] What do I know? CCS during this period was really challenging.

KC: Wally died after a brief illness in 1991. We started running a huge deficit, and we weren’t sure what the hell we were going to do. Wendell Anderson had become the chairman two years before Wally died, and I took over two years later.

When was this?

KC: This was in 1993. That was a transitional year when Frank Couzens, Jr., was the acting president. He was a very nice man; he ran CCS for about a year. And during that period of time, we were searching for a new president. Anyway, we found this guy [Rick Rogers] in

So, he came here and he became the boss. And my job then and now, for 25 years, has been to support him. The Board’s job is to support the school and its management, its academic growth, and I don’t think we have wavered from that. My job was also growing the Board in terms of strength to the point now where we have the best Board in all of southeastern Michigan, all of Michigan, all of the Midwest, maybe. We have a terrific Board. And that’s been our job. It’s to support the efforts of the school. What is your working relationship like? What has kept it strong?

KC: Well, there are two relationships. I also have a relationship with my Board of Trustees, and half of them I recruited, two-thirds. The rest of them, there were a few that were already here, but not many. Because I had far more, at that point, impact and influence in the city — who was here, who wasn’t here. We built a Board that was very strong and supportive of the school’s efforts, which sometimes were easy, sometimes were tough. I mean, the Board was behind the efforts to make the second campus, for example. That was a hell of a stretch, but we did it with the support of everyone on the Board — financially, economically, PR-wise, everything. That was 15 years into it, but in the beginning, I think our job, my job, was to make sure the Board supported the academic efforts of the president and his faculty. That was my job.

As a publisher and an editor-in-chief, I understood what it meant to support an effort like that because I had the same challenge in my own company. We had — I never found out, and we never talked about it — but there well could have been times when Rick said, ‘Oh my God, what did he write this week?’ [laughter]

And whether it was my own staff, and the ad sales guys and the editors who saw what we were doing as a publication, or what I was doing individually; whether it was Automotive News or Crain’s Detroit Business, which are two powerful publications, if I can say so, Rick had to put up with all that. And he understood, as I understood, the support for him.

Now, I will grant you, he was a lot nicer in talking about potential things that were going to happen. Because I never gave him that choice editorially in my company. I mean, he was a subscriber.

Rick Rogers: That’s right.

KC: He learned about it Monday morning. [laughter]

KC: Well you know, it was usually, it was too late. [laughter] We also bonded, respectfully, as friends. I have a great deal of regard for Rick’s talents and his personality, his family, his wife. And I think the feeling is mutual.

RR: I will confirm that. [smiles] He doesn’t have to think it.

KC: Rick’s skills as president of CCS are remarkable, and we fit together very well. I give him the support he needs, I think. He does the job that has made me proud of being chairman. It’s a great relationship, and I will miss it. He doesn’t second guess me, and I don’t second guess him. We have enough faith in each other’s skills and abilities. It just works. There’s a saying about two people who are in business: “If you leave, I leave.” We’ve always had that, and when Rick said, ‘It’s time for me to retire,’ I immediately said that I’m going, too. Time for me to retire. And I’m a hell of a lot older than he is. He’s just a kid.

RR: I feel the urge to jump in here and say a few things about Keith.

KC: Make sure it gets on tape. [laughter]

RR: I’ll speak up. [laughter] What Keith said about the way he supports — that his philosophy is to support the president of the academic enterprise — he has absolutely been loyal to that position from the get-go. Countless times over the years I have told people that Keith Crain is adamant that the Board does not muck around in the day-to-day operation of the school, that they leave it up to the people who have been given that responsibility and that they’re there to support and guide.

But I’d also say, leaving aside his judgment of me, he has remarkable judgment about people in general. He has an intuition about people, which in my experience is almost unfailing, and

The challenge in all of our businesses is people. If you get great department heads, you will have great departments, and those departments will attract great students, which will feed and create more great students.”

— Keith Crain

obviously that’s an extremely valuable asset for the institution. Because if I can go to him and ask him what he thinks about so and so, and he tells me, I’m pretty sure that I can take that to the bank. And the other thing I want to say is that Keith knows what’s right. You know, I have complete regard for his integrity. He just has an innate sense of what’s right, and he’ll tell you.

KC: And often he will write it.

RR: That’s true. That is true. It gives you a lot of confidence as president that you’ve got a chair who you can depend on to do the right thing, you know?

KC: What he said about my gut feeling applies to him, to Rick. I have no idea. There were, I don’t know, 10, 12, people. It could have been 100, I don’t know. But I just knew Rick was right for the spot. And the other thing I didn’t know, that happened very quickly, was we bonded. We understood our roles, and we bonded. It was just natural. And I got to tell you, the school would not be where it is today if we hadn’t had, I think, the team, both Rick and I, because we just simply work together, and I pray to God that his successor and my successor will have that same wonderful privilege and understanding.

journalist. And that will make it fine. He didn’t know anything. And it didn’t even matter. Rick was perfect for the spot. He’d been trained. I don’t know what would have happened if we hadn’t hired him.

RR: Speaking of Peter Brown: Years ago I was invited to a reception at Ford Motor Company that the then-chairman of the company, Alex Trotman, was going to be at, and I must have mentioned to you or asked you if you were going because somehow you knew that I was going to this thing. And I went with a lot of trepidation. I had moved to Detroit a few months earlier, and now I’m meeting the CEO of one of the biggest corporations in the world. So, I’m standing there and Peter Brown walks in, and he says, ‘I’m Peter Brown. I work for Keith Crain. He told me to come over and introduce you around.’ Peter and I became very close friends over the years, but I always thought how thoughtful of Keith to send somebody over to help me negotiate this very strange situation.

KC: But we had all been there. I’d been there. I came to Detroit 50 years ago from Chicago as a kid to run Automotive News, to save it. I was 29, or 30, maybe, when I did it. And Peter Brown came. I think we’ve all walked into that room not knowing a soul.

The one thing that happened that we had no control over was Detroit, which has changed. It’s a hot spot now. Well it wasn’t a hot spot then.

Have you ever had a problem attracting faculty?

KC: Oh, yeah. All sorts of problems.

RR: Sure.

KC: The challenges in all of our businesses are people. If you get great department heads, you will have great departments, and those departments will attract great students, which will feed and create more great students and encourage the assistant department heads. And if you get a great Board, it’s pretty easy to get the next member, because all they do is look at who’s already there and think, ‘You want me to join this group? You bet!’ So, I mean, yes, are there lots of other little things? Of course there are, but it’s people. Whether you’re in the publishing business or the college business, it doesn’t matter. You get the right people, everything hums. Could CCS — this particular institution — exist anywhere else?

KC: I hope that we have built the right foundation — in terms of people, in terms of Board, in terms of finance, in terms of physical

RR: Right. I thought, and I’ve always thought that this relationship we’ve developed, there has been a chemistry right from the start. I thought that was very special because, at least superficially, we’re completely not alike. [laughter] For one thing, I knew nothing about cars then, and I know almost nothing now. [laughter]

KC: But you are responsible for turning out great automotive designers.

RR: Yeah, right, right.

KC: Peter Brown — he and I started Crain’s Detroit Business. We launched it from zero and, about four years later, I switched him from Crain’s Detroit Business, which he was thoroughly enjoying, to Automotive News, which he had absolutely no understanding of. [laughter] And he said, ‘I don’t know anything about cars.’ I said, ‘You’re a great

When did you know that CCS had turned a corner from those early struggles?

KC: I’m not sure it has. [laughter]

RR: I can attest to that. I’m not sure it has.

KC: Somebody once asked Enzo Ferrari, ‘What is your favorite car? And he said, ‘The next one.’ And that’s kind of how I think Rick and I feel.

RR: Yep, yeah.

KC: Whatever the challenge was 25 years ago, it exists today, and it will exist 25 years from now. That’s just the way it is.

RR: The nature of running a college.

KC: In my mind, one of Rick’s great talents is that he has wonderful faculty. And the faculty is what makes a president strong.

brick and mortar — to make it stronger. But I have no idea, and you know, there’s going to come a day in a few months when we just walk away. And I wish the Board well. I do not want them to fail to substantiate what we did. I want them to succeed, to prove that the foundation we left was terrific. What would be your definition of success?

KC: Bigger, better. When we leave, you want enrollment to stay strong, to get better. You want the new president to be able to attract the best talent in the country or in the world. Why is art and design education still important today? And what distinguishes CCS from other art and design schools?

RR: I think that if you look at what businesses say about the kind of skills they’re looking for these days, so-called 21st-century skills, they’re pretty much describing an art and design education, except

they don’t know it. They talk about creativity, collaboration, communication, critical thinking. And those are all the fundamentals of an art and design education, plus you actually come out of it with a set of skills.

KC: I would add, and it doesn't sound sexy, but we teach vocational training. We teach people a trade. We teach them philosophy. We teach them English lit. Those are foundations. But we teach them a skill, too.

RR: Right. So, design thinking is big right now. And design thinking is about trying to help people who are not designers think and act like designers. So there’s some recognition that what designers do is valuable, but there is the false perception that anybody can do it. On the one hand, we are training people to fill functions society needs. On the other hand, we are having to fight back against the idea that this is not serious enough that it requires a college education.

I think what is really distinctive about CCS is how directly we have tried to address that problem, by going out into the neighborhoods and offering art education through a panoply of partnerships with local organizations and then going on to start a charter school to give kids a pathway to get into a college like CCS and get into a profession. We are the only art and design college in the country that has done that. The accrediting team said it was a national model. Nobody does it as well as we do.

Any final reflections on what makes your partnership work?

KC: You know, I never got in his way. I was a sounding board from time to time where he’d say, ‘What do you think about her, him, that project, whatever,’ and I would say, ‘What do you think?’ And he’d say, ‘I think we should do it.’ And I’d say, ‘Fine. Let’s do it.’

Rick Rogers and Keith Crain atop the Kresge-Ford Building during campus expansion, circa 2001.

“Businesses today talk about needing 21stcentury skills — creativity, collaboration, communication, critical thinking — and those are the fundamentals of an art and design education.”

— Richard Rogers

No institution succeeds on the efforts of one person alone. It takes many roles, executed by everyone from the top down — from the president and Trustees to administrative staff, faculty and even alumni, who champion, in too many ways to count, the school that gave them their start. Most important, it takes a shared understanding of what the future might look like and how to get there.

THE ART OF VISION

Good People, Strong Programs and Trust: Building a Modern Art and Design College

In 1906, inspired by the English Arts and Crafts Movement, a group of civic leaders founded the Detroit Society of Arts and Crafts. The Society sought to nurture the ideals of beauty and craftsmanship in an ever-industrializing world and offered courses in basic design, drawing and woodcarving, eventually opening a gallery where students and prominent modern artists displayed and sold their work.

The lineage of the College for Creative Studies began in this small, informal organization and, as Detroit’s creative community evolved, so did the Society. By 1926, it was one of the first arts and crafts organizations to offer a formal, four-year program in art and, within a year, the ART SCHOOL OF THE DETROIT SOCIETY OF ARTS AND CRAFTS enrolled 280 students. The Art School hired talented local artists and designers and renowned painters, sculptors and craftspeople from around the world to teach courses and, by 1933, garnered national media attention as one of the first art institutions to recognize the automobile as an art form. Around the same time, the Art School introduced additional programs in industrial design and commercial art, moving to CCS’s current location in Detroit’s cultural center in 1958. The Art School officially became a college in 1962 when the Michigan Department of Education authorized the institution to offer a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Industrial Design. Within eight years, the school offered

degrees in all of its major programs and was accredited by the National Association of Schools of Art and Design (NASAD) in 1972 and by the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools (NCA) in 1977. It changed its name to the Center for Creative Studies – College of Art and Design in 1975 and then to the College for Creative Studies in 2001.

Richard Rogers began his tenure as president of the Center for Creative Studies (CCS) in 1994. CCS had been through many iterations, expanding in fits and starts over the preceding four decades. That fall, amid declining enrollment, the College welcomed 769 students in five majors: Crafts, Industrial Design, Graphic Communications, Photography and Fine Arts. But Rogers’ commitment to evolving the College’s programs and seeking new opportunities to position CCS for the future has, in no small measure, created a modern art and design college with an international reputation. So, too, have the people who teach here and the central themes of Rogers’ leadership: partnership and trust.

That October, one month after the start of the first semester of his tenure as president, Rick Rogers held a strategic planning meeting with staff which, in addition to preparing the College for an upcoming self-study report for accrediting body North Central Association of Colleges and Schools (NCA), set the stage for addressing the College’s numerous issues and for determining its new direction.

“It’s hard to even say what the culture was at the time,” Rogers recalled. “One of the problems was that there were mini-cultures: each department had its own culture and there was very little cooperation, collaboration or even communication among the departments. And one of the things I noted was that there wasn’t a functioning Foundation program. So there wasn’t any agreement as to some fundamental set of skills or capacities that all the students graduating from college needed to have.”

CCS was, in this regard, a near-exception: most art and design colleges enroll students into foundational courses in their first year. In their second year, students declare a major. At the time of Rogers’ arrival, CCS students went directly into

Opposite: Students at the Art School of the Detroit Society of Arts and Crafts (top). The first Art School exhibit (bottom). This page: Illustration students in the Walter B. Ford II Building.

discipline-specific coursework only, without undergoing a range of foundational core courses. Liberal Arts courses were offered but not universally required.

Fine Arts Instructor MATTHEW HOLLAND chaired the committee that developed the College’s Foundation program within a year of Rogers’ arrival. Holland served as the program’s first director and its first principal instructor, and Rogers credits him with jumpstarting the program that exists today. “The faculty, with Matt’s leadership, came together and developed a Foundation program which we put in place and that has continued to evolve over the years,” he said. “But it was a very big undertaking because it really called for a change in mindset among the faculty.”

Recent years had seen dramatic and often contentious shifts in College leadership, and, as a result, the faculty had become fractured and tensions ran high, particularly regarding job security. When Rogers attended CCS’s Faculty Assembly, his presence was not universally welcomed. “I felt that I needed to attend Faculty Assembly meetings to establish communication and a sense of collaboration,” Rogers said. “So, I went to the first meeting and a huge argument erupted over whether I would be allowed to attend or not.”

Eventually, faculty members agreed to allow Rogers to attend their meetings, which he attended routinely until his retirement. He recalled from the early days that “every time I attended a meeting a small group of faculty members would yell at me for one reason or another. But I just had to go and hope that eventually, one way or another, we would overcome this animosity and establish trust, and a better basis for working together, which we eventually did.”

One of the underlying problems was that there had been no guidelines for how the Faculty Assembly as a body should interact with the administration nor even for how individual faculty performance would be evaluated and rewarded. The College’s precarious financial situation had previously made salary increases intermittent and indiscriminate. Another faculty committee had spent the previous three years developing a faculty handbook but had made little headway.

This combination of circumstances prompted Rogers to initiate a committee tasked with developing a faculty contract — agreed-upon terms and expectations and, most important, an understanding that job security would be tied primarily to excellence in performance.

Current Professor of Art History, DR. MARY M c NICHOLS , served on the faculty contract committee and remembers those times vividly. “There have always been so many truly dedicated, committed people here,” said McNichols, “dedicated to the students and to their own art and to the community, as well. Tragically, we were torn apart for a while, and there was a lot of animosity on both sides. But, in fact, some people that I considered personal friends were on the other side, and we got past that.”

Rogers established ever higher goals going forward, including bolstering CCS’s reputation in metropolitan Detroit, the country and the world; offering an integrated, interdisciplinary education; improving the student experience; becoming an innovator in art and design education; achieving an enrollment of 1,000 degree-seeking students; and this, stated as a vision statement for the College in that first strategic plan: “Be an innovator in art and design education, employing state-of-the-art technology, drawing upon international expertise, expanding the boundaries of the disciplines it teaches, and exploring new areas of art and design consistent with its mission and aspirations.”

Within five years, CCS was well underway toward achieving these goals. To the original five majors in Graphic Communications (Graphic Design, Advertising Design and Illustration), Crafts, Fine Arts, Industrial Design (which included Transportation Design) and Photography, the College expanded its offerings to include programs in Interior Design (1996) and Animation and Digital Media (now Entertainment Arts, 1997). Student support services were greatly enhanced with the addition of offices of Academic Advising, Career Services, International Student Services, Multicultural Affairs, a Wellness Center and a Student Success Center to help will learning issues.

BFA degree-seeking enrollment hit 1,037 by Fall 1998 — an increase of more than 30 percent. But the numbers tell only part of the story.

“Be an innovator … employ state-of-the-art technology … expand disciplines … explore new areas …” This vision statement could just as easily have applied to a tech start-up, medical research or space travel. Under Rogers’ leadership, the tasks CCS had set for itself were imposing but not impossible. Time would demonstrate that with a lot of hard work, determination and difficult decision-making, the College would become one of the best of its kind.

More important, CCS could become a place that relied as much on good people as it did on Rogers’ fundamental trust in those people to lead and create good programs. Faculty recruitment became key to reinvigorating the curriculum.

Hired at the start of the 1997–1998 academic year to lead Graphic Communications, graphic designer DOUG KISOR , who served as chair until 2016, recalls that he had his work cut out for him. “In the first year, my goal was to establish a much stronger foundation in form skills and then work on the courses,” Kisor said. “And then in the second, third and fourth years, I built on those form skills and introduced the idea of thinking from a technology perspective (we’re all familiar with that today because we use smartphones) — so the idea

that your design should be able to function on different devices as well as in print, of course. And we introduced motion graphics, as well. We put in some really strong concept courses because design is really about ideas.”

Kisor brought in SUSAN L a PORTE who now chairs the Communication Design department and illustrator GIL ASHBY to lead Illustration. Ashby, a freelancer and teacher from New York, had never chaired his own department and remembers the experience as something that would have been daunting had it not been for the support of Rogers. “I was standing in the hallway before class started, and [Rick Rogers] was just passing through,” Ashby said. “Rick stopped, and we started talking.

Opposite: Susan Aaron Taylor (in apron) instructs fiber and textiles students. This page: Doug Kisor, former chair of Communication Design (formerly Graphic Communications), 1997—2016 (top). Susan LaPorte, current chair of Communication Design, with students (middle). Gil Ashby, professor and chair of Illustration, 1999—2011 (bottom).

“Be an innovator in art and design education, employing state-ofthe-art technology, drawing upon international expertise, expanding the boundaries of the disciplines it teaches, and exploring new areas of art and design consistent with its mission and aspirations.”

— CCS Mission Statement (excerpt)

You know, this was my first position of leadership, my first opportunity to run the show, and I said that to Rick. He said, ‘Trust yourself.’ It put him in a good place with me, and I did trust myself, didn’t second guess myself too often, and we [Illustration] eventually became the second largest department in the school.”

In 2001, IMRE MOLNAR arrived as dean of the College, its chief academic officer, and both faculty recruitment and curricular innovation kicked into high gear. Molnar, an industrial designer and illustrator, had alternated between academia and industry, most recently as design director at Patagonia. That combination of experience was perfect for CCS’s growing emphasis on career preparation and collaboration with industry. Rogers recalled: “I believed that for the school to stay vital and to meet our goals and aspirations, we had to keep growing the enrollment. We had to focus more intensively on preparing students for careers. We had to demonstrate that a CCS degree leads to great jobs or success as artist entrepreneurs, which it does. To use an auto industry term, we had to be a ‘supplier’ of talent to the creative industries.” Rogers and Molnar worked together closely for 11 years until Molnar’s untimely death of a heart attack at age 61.

Molnar, an Australian with European roots and teaching experience, recruited far and wide. While in 1994 CCS’s faculty were largely from the local area, today they come from all over the country and around the world, thanks to the efforts of Molnar and those who followed him, like Dean of

Undergraduate Affairs emeritus VINCE CARDUCCI Department Chairs DON KILPATRICK (Illustration), PAUL SNYDER (Transportation Design) and TIM FLATTERY (Entertainment Arts) all came from the West Coast. Interior Design Chair SANDRA OLAVE is from Colombia, Foundation Chair ELENA ARNAUTOVA from Russia, Fashion Accessories Design Chair AKI CHOKLAT from Finland. Craft and Material Studies (Crafts) Chair KIM HARTY came from Chicago, Art Practice (Fine Arts) Chair VALERIE JENKINS from St. Paul, and MFA Transportation Design Chair RAPHAEL ZAMMIT from Cincinnati. MFA Color and Materials Design Chair SALLY ERICKSON WILSON and Dean of Graduate Studies IAN LAMBERT are from the United Kingdom, while MFA Systems Design Thinking Chair MARIA LUISA ROSSI is from Italy, as is former Product Design Chair VINCENZO IAVICOLI

Other full-time faculty today come from Brazil, Japan, South Korea, the UK, Nigeria, Zimbabwe, around the United States, and, of course, Detroit. And this list does not include the many adjunct faculty who also come from a variety of backgrounds.

This international orientation expanded further through extensive global partnerships, including 16 international cooperating or exchange agreements with such institutions as FH|Joanneum in Graz, Austria; Strate École de Design in Paris, France; MIT Institute of Design in Pune, India; Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing, China; study abroad programs in the Netherlands, Italy, France, Ireland and the UK; and cultural immersion workshops like the four-week program for automotive designers from China, Japan and South Korea.

In the late 1990s, Rogers reached a realization that made this period a turning point for CCS’s academic programs: that breaking up larger departments into discrete, specialized units would ultimately improve the quality of each discipline.

“Splitting something off from an existing department into its own department created a lot of new opportunities and expanded the scope of CCS’s curriculum in ways that would not have happened if we had left that discipline within another department. So we looked within departments and thought about how we could separate something out that would make that discipline more prominent, higher quality and more successful. We maintained and strengthened the historic programs while at the same time developing new programs to address new opportunities and position CCS for the future.” Entertainment Arts and Interior Design both came out of the Industrial Design department. Graphic Communications divided into three: Graphic Design (now Communication Design), Illustration and Advertising. Molnar later separated Industrial Design into Transportation Design and

Product Design. These changes drove not only quality but enrollment: Entertainment Arts and Illustration are now the largest departments.

In 2009, the College fulfilled another long-held dream when it launched its first two graduate programs, the MFA in Transportation Design and the MFA in Integrated Design (Systems Design Thinking). Both were developed by Molnar, who later collaborated with then Dean of Graduate Studies JOANNE HEALY on two more MFA programs in Interaction Design and Color and Materials Design, the first of its kind in the country.

Before his death, Molnar had started work on the College’s newest undergraduate major in Fashion Accessories Design, in collaboration with Shinola. It launched in 2015, and as Chair Aki Choklat says, “helped establish a new culture of fashion in the city.” Continuing to innovate, the College introduced its newest specialization within the Entertainment Arts department in 2019, Concept Design, developed and led by Tim Flattery (‘87, Transportation Design), alumnus and Chair of Entertainment Arts and a renowned Hollywood concept designer. It, too, is one of a very few of its kind in the country. The prestige of CCS’s faculty is indicative of Rogers’ drive for quality throughout his tenure. Not only are they international, but they are highly accomplished

artists, designers and scholars, active professionals who bring their experience to the classroom. They are as deeply committed to teaching as they are to their own creative work. They set high standards and expectations for their students that result in a demanding and rigorous curriculum that both nurtures students’ creativity and gives them the skills and work habits to succeed after graduation. And the success of so many of the College’s alumni attests to the quality of a CCS education that the faculty, supported by a dedicated administrative staff, deliver.

As Rogers retired in the summer of 2019, CCS offered 12 undergraduate majors, four graduate programs and a certificate in Art Education. The number of enrolled degree students had nearly doubled since 1994 to 1,467 — 1,414 undergraduates and 53 graduate students. CCS continues to be one of the highest-performing private colleges of art and design in the world, placing its graduates in major corporations around the globe. From 2016–2019, more than 460 companies came to CCS to recruit, 148 of them international. A number of factors account for such success, and academic restructuring, physical expansion and the cultural transformation of the College have been significant. Chair of MFA Color and Materials Design Sally Erickson Wilson summed it up this way: “At his best, Rick had the ability to bring the right people together in the right conversation to make things happen.”

Opposite: Chair of Fashion Accessories Design, Aki Choklat, teaching the art of shoemaking (top). Chair of MFA Transportation Design, Raphael Zammit, discusses future mobility solutions (bottom). This page: Imre Molnar, Dean of the CCS and Provost, 2001—2012 (top, left). Chair of Interior Design Sandra Olave (in black) with Interior Design students (bottom, left). Illustration Chair, Don Kilpatrick (rear), at Eastern Market with students (above).

Expansion is often the first sign of progress, but it’s what’s inside a new structure that drives community evolution. The Walter and Josephine Ford Campus, the A. Alfred Taubman Center for Design Education, world-class faculty, new and reinvigorated programs and leading-edge technology: this is progress defined as a shared vision — as people coming together to figure out what works and build on it.

THE ART OF EXPANSION

Associate Professor and alumnus Stephen Schock (‘90, Industrial Design) working with Product Design students.

A Sense of Place: Transformation and Expansion

The strategic planning process is essentially a plan to make plans, and one that emerged early in Richard Rogers’ tenure was the campus Master Plan, the purpose of which was to create a functional, coherent and beautiful campus. Trustee and Facilities Chair A. Alfred Taubman reached out to renowned New York architectural firm Kohn Pedersen Fox (KPF) who, through a number of iterations, designed the layout of what is now the Walter and Josephine Ford Campus.

“Kohn Pedersen Fox came in and started a very comprehensive campus master planning process,” Rogers said, “where they interviewed people all across campus to determine what the needs were and then came up with a program for what we needed to achieve in order to create this campus and get CCS a sense of place — more of a physical identity.”

Most of the outside world had no idea how dilapidated, and outdated, many of the facilities had become over the years. “Staff members were literally coming to work and parking in a mud pit,” said ANNE BECK , vice president for Administration and Finance. “I don’t think people realize what we were dealing with back then.”

Rather, the structure was an early signal of what would become the College’s expansive — and, in many ways, unrivaled for a college of its size — commitment to community engagement.

Rogers hired MIKEL BRESEE in 2000 as the director of the College’s new Community Arts Partnerships (CAP).

One of CAP’s first projects was the 3,000-sq.-ft. tile mosaic, “Patterns of Detroit,” created by local muralist Hubert Massey, along with numerous artists from CCS and around Detroit. The mural, which includes a mother and child surrounded by colorful panels representing the cultures of Detroit, covers the outside wall of the College’s now 20-year-old parking structure, built during the campus expansion. Massey's panel was dedicated in 2002 and the completed mural in 2003.

The school’s $60-million physical transformation was a central part of its overall development into a world-class institution of higher learning. More important, it enabled the school to better educate artists and designers and vastly expand its mission to provide arts education and resources to the surrounding community. The campus expansion project was a giant leap forward for the College, which sought not only to modernize its facilities and launch new programs but also to provide much-needed workspace for CCS staff and bring coherence to the campus.

“There was no sense that you’d reached a destination when you got here,” Rogers recalled of the campus pre-expansion. “People would drive down Kirby, and they’d say, ‘Where is CCS?’ So there was clearly an issue of identity. I learned quickly after getting here that a lot of people didn’t even know this was a degree-granting institution. That’s why we decided to change the name at the same time we changed the campus, so people would know this was really a college.”

In 1997, the College purchased the building and land that had formerly served as the CHARLES H. WRIGHT MUSEUM OF AFRICAN AMERICAN HISTORY in order to house its library and Center Galleries. The library had been in cramped quarters in the Kresge-Ford Building and desperately needed to expand to meet academic requirements. The Galleries had previously been housed in the Park Shelton building — hundreds of yards off campus. CCS also began construction on a dedicated parking structure. Both structures would become central to the new campus plan, but the parking structure generated unexpected ire from some members of the surrounding community. Bounded by a block-long concrete wall on one side, it may have seemed as if CCS was literally turning its back on them. This was not the case, however, as the College had made an agreement with the City of Detroit to keep access open from the parking structure on Brush Street through to the other side of campus.

In August 1999, CCS demolished the structure that had housed its INSTITUTE OF MUSIC AND DANCE (IMD), which would move to Marygrove College.

Construction then began on the three-story, 102,000 sq.-ft. Walter B. Ford II Building, designed by KPF and Ghafari and built by Walbridge, with new classrooms, studios and industry-standard facilities for its recently inaugurated programs in Animation and Digital Media (now Entertainment Arts) and Interior Design, as well as established programs in Graphic Communications (now three programs in Communication Design, Illustration and Advertising Design) and Industrial Design (now Transportation Design and Product Design).

“We were very optimistic about the future. We saw this as a second transformation of the College. It was about doing all of these things and making them all work together — new educational opportunities, new educational outcomes and new economic activity in the city.

— Richard Rogers

Opposite: The Manoogian Visual Resource Center, formerly the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History (top). CCS Library houses thousands of art and design books, periodicals and other resources (bottom).

The building was financed in part by a gift of $20 million from Honorary Trustee and longtime supporter Josephine F. Ford — in honor of her late husband Walter B. Ford II, who had served as CCS Board chair for 30 years and had been a passionate patron of the arts at both CCS and the Detroit Institute of Arts. “For many years, the Center for Creative Studies was supported by the generosity of Board Vice Chairman [sic] Walter B. Ford, the founder of the Ford and Earl design firm in Warren,” reported the Detroit Free Press a few years earlier. “He was a major benefactor of the arts, and CCS was his baby. He guided the school’s expansion over 20 years, regularly producing money for new buildings, the superb faculty and operating deficits.”

The WALTER B. FORD II BUILDING opened for classes in September 2001, a couple of weeks before CCS’s new name, College for Creative Studies, became official. At the same time, renovations were completed on two historic homes on Ferry Street to connect them and convert them into Admissions and administrative offices.

THE JOSEPHINE F. FORD SCULPTURE GARDEN , designed by Grissim Metz Andriese Associates, followed in 2005, in collaboration with the Detroit Institute of Arts. A spectacular display of 20thcentury sculpture, the two-acre site comprises 11 sculptures on permanent loan from the DIA’s collection — currently including works by Anthony Caro and Ursula von Rydingsvard — and was the city’s first sculpture garden open to the public.

The campus expansion was a key part of the institution’s five-year plan to raise its national profile. With enrollment increasing, industrystandard equipment becoming the norm, consistent standards for

faculty, and improved facilities, that goal was steadily becoming reality, not least because of Trustee and donor generosity. Indeed, philanthropy played a key role in all of CCS’s major initiatives.

Mrs. Ford’s gift spearheaded a successful $45-million capital campaign for the expansion, led by Trustee Heinz Prechter, with significant giving from a number of board members. Since Rogers’ arrival and his gradual development of a strong Leadership Team, CCS’s administration had demonstrated that it was not only capable of pursuing “big ideas” but could also execute them — steward the partnerships and funding that make such ideas a reality. CCS’s Board of Trustees embraced those ideas and played a critical role, providing counsel, networking and philanthropy. Their dedication and example would motivate many other donors to support the next phases of CCS’s development.

A Radical Vision

As a second campus for the College, the A. ALFRED TAUBMAN CENTER FOR DESIGN EDUCATION, which opened in 2009, has been a boon: room for all of the design departments and studios, much-needed student dormitories, the College’s four graduate programs, a public charter school and economic development initiatives. But the building’s significance moves beyond the traditional narrative of expansion — the idea that the school can become better by becoming bigger. For CCS, the Taubman Center is a site of cultural and community evolution, a radical rethinking of how campus space can and should be used. And, while progress

in New Center has been a long time coming, the signs are finally there: this one-of-a-kind space has also helped to drive development in the neighborhood.

Unique among art and design colleges, the A. Alfred Taubman Center for Design Education represents a substantial and innovative convergence of art, design, education, technology and business. While it sits less than a mile from CCS’s original campus, the road to its realization was a long one. And 10 years after opening, its impact — on the College, on the New Center neighborhood — is noteworthy.

“The mid-2000s was a very active, very fertile time for CCS,” Rogers said. “We were optimistic about the future. We saw this as a second transformation of the College, but it wasn’t just about doing a big building. It was about putting all of these things inside the building and making them, somehow, work together — generating new educational opportunities, new educational outcomes and new economic activity in the city. Let’s do it and see what happens.”

Rogers acknowledges that the project to develop what would become the Taubman Center was a risky undertaking in an economic climate that was becoming ever more precarious — and that would eventually result in the Great Recession. Owned by General Motors, the 11-story, Art Deco Argonaut Building occupied a full city block in Detroit’s New Center district. “GM had tried unsuccessfully to find some entity to take on the building. Without development, it was either going to be another empty building or vacant lot, and that would have been a blow to the neighborhood.”

Because of its enormous forward momentum, in the early 2000s CCS still lacked the space it needed to continue growing, and the College’s Ford Campus footprint had expanded as much as it could. CCS would need another site. More important than expansion for its own sake, however, a new campus would amplify the school’s community engagement mission and bring to fruition many of the ideas Rogers and the Leadership Team had envisioned — such as creating a graduate program, opening a charter school and spurring economic development.

But none of the properties they viewed seemed adequate for the College’s purposes. Turning toward multi-use facilities, Rogers recalls a fateful conversation with MATTHEW P. CULLEN , then head of global real estate for GM and now a CCS Trustee. Cullen asked Rogers what he was working on. “‘I’m looking for space.’ And Matt said, ‘Well I have a big building that I’m trying to find a use for.’ So he told me about the Argonaut. I was intrigued, and we had several meetings to talk about it. [Cullen] roughed out a way that the project could be financed, and he made it sound very doable.”

Rogers presented the idea to A. ALFRED TAUBMAN , CCS Trustee and head of the Board’s Facilities Committee, who was not at first convinced of the building’s feasibility. The more he looked at it, however, the more Taubman liked the idea — to the point that he became deeply involved in the renovation’s design and the lead donor of the project.

Left: The Josephine F. Ford Sculpture Garden and Walter B. Ford II Building.

Right: The A. Alfred Taubman Center for Design Education lobby.

Built in two phases, 1928 and 1936, for General Motors, the Albert Kahn-designed Argonaut Building had previously sat vacant for a decade, after housing the automaker’s first research laboratory and design studio until 1956, and, later, offices. GM sold the building to CCS for $100 and generously supported the campaign to fund the project. It would become the ideal solution to help the College advance, fully, into the 21st century. Cullen kickstarted the Argonaut project. Trustee

GARY L. COWGER , then GM group vice president of Manufacturing and Labor, Trustee EDWARD T. WELBURN, JR. , then GM vice president of Global Design, and MARK REUSS , then president of GM North America, were all instrumental in making it happen, according to Rogers. Albert Kahn Associates, the same firm that originally designed the building, designed the renovation. Trustee JOHN RAKOLTA, JR. ’s, family-owned company Walbridge had managed construction on the Walter B. Ford II Building and would do so again for the Argonaut renovation.

“It actively pushed CCS right into the middle of what was happening in Midtown, and it became a major anchor institution under Rick’s leadership,” explained STEVE HAMP , former president of The Henry Ford and founder of Henry Ford Academy (Dearborn), who consulted on the Argonaut redevelopment and did considerable fundraising for the project. Simultaneous to Rogers’ interest in the Argonaut, he and Hamp had been discussing the possibility of partnering on a charter school — what would eventually become Henry Ford Academy: School for Creative Studies (now

University Prep Art & Design) and reside in the Taubman.

“My job was really to work with Rick to help the idea evolve, to connect the Thompson Foundation to Rick and to CCS, and help find talent for the school,” Hamp continued, “and then, specifically, to raise foundation funds for the project. It was exciting because it was visibly going to be one of the big pillars in a re-emergent Midtown, and Rick stepped up to the plate. I think the foundation community that funded and got involved in this was excited because they wanted to see a project that would attract a lot of capital as much for the project itself but also for the revitalization of the region. They could see that the [Argonaut development] was going to have reputational heft in the community, and it was a big sign of the change that followed. So it was

a real pioneer in the next decade of development in New Center.”

Indeed, former CCS Vice President for Institutional Advancement NINA HOLDEN recalls that, in addition to fundraising, CCS’s biggest task was to create a compelling narrative of the project’s objectives that would stimulate the imaginations of the numerous foundation, development and business partners it would need to succeed. By the time Holden had joined the College in 2008, the project had already secured its lead gift of $15 million from Taubman. CCS Vice President for Administration and Finance ANNE BECK , along with a dedicated team of consultants from Clark Hill and Plante & Moran, had begun structuring and applying for the complex combination of federal and state tax credits they would need to bring the development to completion.

“The moment came when we were able to take the project from being a bricks-and-mortar, capital project to this vision of being a pipeline to bring Detroit students into the creative industries,” Holden said. “Until we were able to express this vision, it just wasn’t as compelling. Because the Argonaut was a cool old Detroit building, but the real story was about people. So, how to get to that story was challenging, but once we did, the project really took off.”

CCS Trustee DAVID T. FISCHER led fundraising for the $145million Argonaut project, with Taubman as Honorary Chair of the campaign, which, after $70 million in tax credits and $17 million from the Thompson Foundation to build out the charter school, raised $58 million. The 760,000-sq.-ft. educational and creative community houses CCS’s six undergraduate design programs as well as its graduate programs in Transportation Design, Systems Design Thinking, Interaction Design and Color and Materials Design, and its Color and Materials Library.

The Taubman Center is home to the art and design charter school for middle and high school students, University Prep Art & Design. The College’s community outreach programming, including Community Arts Partnerships, is also there.

Co-founded by the College and Business Leaders for Michigan, Design Core Detroit (formerly Detroit Creative Corridor Center) — a business support agency that attracts and develops design businesses and advocates for the value of design — resides in the Taubman Center, as well as Shinola, which manufactures watches and small leather goods. The vision for the project had

Above, left to right: Ribbon cutting for the A. Alfred Taubman Center for Design Education. Detroit Mayor Dave Bing (2009—2013), Rick Rogers and Trustee David T. Fischer at the building dedication. Business leader and philanthropist A. Alfred Taubman helped lead the Argonaut redevelopment project and was the lead donor.

always included housing businesses that were compatible with the educational activities in the building to foster greater business-education collaboration and provide professional opportunities for students. There are student dormitories housing 300 beds, the Benson and Edith Ford Conference Center, a gymnasium, a dining hall, and an art supply and bookstore. And the building’s redevelopment has provided more than 500 permanent jobs. Today, the Taubman Center achieves far more than expanding the College’s physical space or broadening its programs. The project now contributes to the city’s creative economy by

catalyzing design innovation, attracting — and producing — talent for the region’s creative industries and offering more art education opportunities for Detroit students.

According to SUSAN MOSEY , executive director of development and planning organization Midtown Detroit, Inc., the Taubman Center has helped to blaze a trail for economic development and investment in New Center, a historic and architecturally stunning neighborhood that had for many years been in economic decline but is currently experiencing a resurgence.

Curbed Detroit estimated that in 2019, the neighborhood saw

no fewer than 18 major developments come to fruition, including Baltimore Station, retail, residences and the ongoing Fisher Building restoration.

“It was one of the first big catalytic projects after General Motors had left the area. So, the fact that CCS was willing to make an investment in an area that had seen so much disinvestment was huge,” said Mosey. “I think that generated a lot of interest, and it’s been a big contribution. It clearly was one of the projects that got people rethinking New Center and what New Center can become.”

Thinking back to a time when the Taubman Center was still little more than a big idea, RIP RAPSON , president and CEO of The Kresge Foundation, a major donor to the project, describes the boldness of Rogers’ vision and its potential for the College and the city: “With the Taubman Center, Rick took on a capital campaign that I think everybody at the time thought was just impossible. He was looking at a kind of programming that was very different from what the College had ever done. He needed to stitch together a set of partnerships that were complex, almost beyond description.

“I remember talking to him early on in that process, and realizing that even though he had doubts about whether CCS could actually pull it off, he really saw in that move an opportunity to both stretch the community and stretch the institution in a way that was required both of them to survive into the future. And I thought in some ways it became symbolic of the kind of attitude the community as a whole needed to embrace.”

Opposite, top to bottom: The Taubman Center loft-style dormitories sleep 300 students. MFA classroom. Above, left: Shinola Detroit and students at the Henry Ford Academy: School for Creative Studies (now University Prep Art & Design).

Above, right: Economic development agency Design Core Detroit.

From 1994–2019, Richard Rogers, the Leadership Team, Trustees, and dedicated staff and partners together transformed a small art and design college of under 800 students into an internationally recognized institution — enrolling more than 1,400 graduate and undergraduate students — that nurtures creative talent and champions its value to society. This is a collective portrait of their collaboration, excellence and steadfast dedication to art and design education.

1994

Richard L. Rogers begins his tenure as president. Center for Creative Studies welcomes 769 students in five majors: Crafts, Industrial Design, Graphic Communications, Photography and Fine Arts.

Historic Yamasaki Building is rebuilt.

Art Education (Visual Arts Teacher Certification) program established.

12 UNDERGRADUATE PROGRAMS Advertising (Design and Copywriting), Art Practice (Fine Arts), Communication Design, Craft and Material Studies, Entertainment Arts, Fashion Accessories Design, Illustration, Interior Design, Photography, Product Design, Transportation Design and Art Education (Visual Arts Teacher

1996

Foundation program implemented.

Interior Design department established.

Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History building and land purchased from the City of Detroit. Animation and Digital Media (now Entertainment Arts) department established.

CCS embarks on a major campus expansion in the cultural district. BFA degree-seeking enrollment hits 1,037. Woodward Lecture Series launches.

The Community Arts Partnerships (CAP) program is established. Marygrove College absorbs Institute of Music and Dance. Toyota Lecture Series launches.

CCS changes its name to College for Creative Studies. Walter B. Ford II Building opens. Illustration becomes a freestanding department.

Josephine F. Ford Sculpture Garden opens, in collaboration with the Detroit Institute of Arts. Graphic Communications becomes three discrete departments — Graphic Design (now Communication Design), Illustration and Advertising.

Josephine Ford $50 million bequest is announced.

General Motors sells the Argonaut Building to CCS for $100, launching the College’s second campus expansion. CAP establishes Detroit Neighborhood Arts Corps (DNAC). CCS begins to administer Kresge Arts in Detroit.

Industrial Design becomes Transportation Design and Product Design. CCS launches Community + Public Arts: Detroit (CPAD).

The A. Alfred Taubman Center for Design Education opens. The first MFA programs are established in Transportation Design and Integrated Design (now Systems Design Thinking).

Henry Ford Academy: School for Creative Studies opens.

Detroit Creative Corridor Center (now Design Core Detroit) is founded in partnership with Business Leaders for Michigan Major renovation of KresgeFord Building on Ford campus is completed. Yamasaki Building becomes comprehensive student services center.

Design Core organizes the first Detroit Design Festival.

Shinola Detroit establishes its headquarters in the Taubman Center.

CCS implements MFA programs in Color and Materials Design and Interaction Design. LinkedIn ranks CCS #3 design school in the country and best in the Midwest.

Detroit becomes the first U.S. city to be recognized by UNESCO as a “City of Design.” CCS adds Fashion Accessories Design program.

Design Core issues 10-year “City of Design Action Plan”.

Renovation of Art Centre Building residence hall on Ford campus is completed, doubling its occupancy.

Enrollment since 1994 doubles to 1,467. Richard L. Rogers and Keith E. Crain retire. Donald L. Tuski begins his tenure as president of CCS and James M. Nicholson becomes CCS Board chair.

1993 Keith E. Crain elected chair of CCS Board of Trustees.

“Community outreach” implies that education moves in only one direction — from the ones who have it to the ones who don’t. Under Richard Rogers’ leadership, CCS became a model of community engagement because young people, parents, schools and neighborhood organizations tell us what kind of art education and programming they want and need. And we listen.

THE ART OF ENGAGEMENT

“The Illuminated Mural,” a CPAD project in Detroit’s Milwaukee Junction, by Katherine Craig, ’08, Art Practice (Fine Arts).

Through Community Arts Partnerships, Design Core

Detroit, Kresge Arts in Detroit, and many other public programs and initiatives, CCS has created an innovative model for partnering with Detroit communities.

Colleges and universities play a vital role in communities — contributing their intellectual capital to overcome social challenges, criticizing outdated norms and preparing graduates not only for professional success but also for meaningful citizenship. The College for Creative Studies has not only embraced this role; it has, according to the visitors’ report from the National Association of Schools of Art and Design, established an innovative model for engaging with its neighbors across the city. Today, CCS is working with THE SKILLMAN FOUNDATION and prominent Detroit arts organizations to develop a better-coordinated and more equitable system of arts education for youth across Detroit. CCS is working with THE KRESGE FOUNDATION to provide transformative support to the city’s emerging, established and eminent artists.

“Initially, I thought that perhaps we could do a better job of managing the IMD and eventually break even, but as time went on, I came to realize that a community music school and an art and design college were fundamentally incompatible, and we were never going to make the combination work,” Rogers recalled. “I came to CCS wanting the College to be engaged in the city — that was very important to me,” Rogers said. “And I decided that we had much greater potential to be engaged and to provide community service to the city through the visual arts than we did through the performing arts.”

Rogers and the Board resolved to find a new home for the IMD and to launch a new initiative of community outreach in the visual arts. While the search progressed, CCS embarked on a major campus expansion that required the demolition of IMD’s historic but nolonger-salvageable building. IMD courses were moved to temporary facilities. In the eyes of some Detroiters, this signaled that the College would simply eliminate the school without attempting to secure its future. For three days in early August 1999, more than two dozen IMD teachers, students and parents picketed CCS to protest what they thought was the school’s imminent closure.

CCS is working with the MAX M. AND MARJORIE S. FISHER FOUNDATION to help talented youth artists in Detroit’s Brightmoor neighborhood as they prepare portfolios and resumes for art school applications. And CCS is working to position Detroit as a leader of art and design on the international stage while advancing the city’s rapidly growing creative economy. These programs, and many others, didn’t spring from the void; they were nurtured by Rick Rogers’ bold vision for community engagement. “Over the years, whenever we were working on strategic plans, we would start with the mission statement and we’d examine it and ask if it was still right. We put community service language into the statement to tell the world that CCS has a two-pronged mission: higher education in art and design and direct service to the community through art and design.”

Institute of Music and Dance

The DETROIT COMMUNITY MUSIC SCHOOL was acquired by the Center for Creative Studies in 1984. Renamed the INSTITUTE OF MUSIC AND DANCE (IMD), the school did not grant degrees but, rather, had been a community resource for metro Detroit children and adults. After joining CCS in 1994, Rogers intended to maintain the IMD, but he soon discovered that it was losing substantial sums of money at a time when the fissures in CCS’s infrastructure — in financial management, operations and facilities, among other things — had become precariously deep.

Having heard the media reports on the protests, however, Glenda D. Price — then president of Marygrove College, an independent Catholic school in northwest Detroit — approached Rogers to ask if she could help. Marygrove did offer degrees in the performing arts, and they quickly agreed that Marygrove would become IMD’s new home. By adopting the Institute of Music and Dance, Price told the Detroit Free Press Marygrove could “expand its reach into the community, establish itself as a cultural center and create a pipeline to funnel talented music and dance students from community programs into college courses.” In January 2000, CCS transferred all of the IMD’s assets to Marygrove, including a $500,000 endowment and dozens of instruments, from pianos to xylophones. IMD continues today as part of the Center for Detroit Arts & Culture at the Marygrove Conservancy.

“Transferring the Institute of Music and Dance from CCS to Marygrove was a painful chapter because some people thought we were just going to shut the school down and didn’t care about the kids,” Rogers said. “We decided to discontinue music and dance education because we wanted to focus our mission exclusively on art and design and build up our community outreach in those areas.

Transferring IMD to Marygrove enabled us to establish the Community Arts Partnerships program which began what came to be a huge commitment to community service by CCS.”

— Richard Rogers

“We wanted to focus our mission exclusively on art and design and build up our community outreach in those areas.”

Opposite: “Patterns of Detroit” by Hubert Massey and dozens of local artists is a 3,000-sq.-ft. tile mosaic on the northeast wall of CCS’s parking structure.

Orders of Magnitude

In the fall of 2000, CCS’s Department of Continuing and Community Education delivered free after-school programs to 53 students at Noble Elementary and Cooper Elementary. In the spring of 2001, President Rick Rogers launched the COMMUNITY ARTS PARTNERSHIPS (CAP) program to extend that impact.

“Several schools had programs called Community Arts Partnerships, and the idea encompassed exactly what I wanted to do in Detroit, which was to go into neighborhoods and partner with organizations to deliver arts education,” Rogers recalled. “I had a lengthy chat about it with Steven Lavine, who at the time was president of California Institute of the Arts. He told me how their program worked, and it was very impressive. I said, ‘That’s how I want to do it in Detroit.’”

Upon receiving a pool of applicants, Rogers tasked Fine Arts Professor Gilda Snowden with interviewing Mikel Bresee, who had done community-based arts education in Chicago. “Gilda was very deeply involved in the community, and across many different activities and organizations,” Rogers said. “I wanted to make sure that whomever we hired would be able to relate well to the Detroit community. So, I had involved Gilda in the search for the director of CAP from the beginning. When she interviewed Mikel, I wasn’t there; she did it on her own. And she came to me and said, ‘You have to hire that guy. He’s going to be great.’ I followed her advice and hired him. And, you know, he proved her to be absolutely right.”

Under Bresee’s direction, CAP quickly brought the College’s after-school arts programs to more students at more Detroit and Hamtramck schools and developed new career discovery tours that allowed middle school students to observe CCS studios and to participate in hands-on art activities with trained CAP instructors. In the first semester alone, these programs expanded the College’s outreach by an order of magnitude, serving 576 students across the city. To date, the initiative has partnered with 318 organizations to provide more than 65,000 Detroit students and their families with free art and design courses and resources.

“Often community outreach programs tend to be based in promoting or recruiting for the school. If you’re in a school that, let’s say, is big in transportation design, then normally your outreach is going to be transportation-design heavy,” Bresee said. But Rick Rogers gave the College permission to go well beyond that role in the community, Bresee said, empowering staff to “really go out and find out what the community needed, then build programs based on those needs.”

Today, CAP works with Detroit institutions to move beyond individual neighborhood arts education programs and to develop youth-serving arts education systems. “Detroit is one of the few major cities that does not have a dedicated public fund to support after-school programs for youth,” said Terry Whitfield, program officer at The Skillman Foundation.

“That creates a level of inequity when it comes to access for young people, as well as an instability of resources for providers.” To address these challenges, CAP now collaborates with Y ARTS to deliver youth arts education through a new GET ON AND LEARN (Goal Line) pilot program. And CAP convenes the DETROIT CREATIVE YOUTH DEVELOPMENT COALITION to coordinate youth arts education services with key institutions across the city. The coalition, which is focused on equity, works to expand opportunities for underserved children, families and neighborhoods.

“Arts education services tend to be organized around individual schools. What happens is, certain schools have the capacity to take advantage of these opportunities and can organize and offer a number of programs. Other schools get nothing,” said Bresee. “By coming together, we hope to plan it out better. We can say this school already has five or six programs, let’s shift some of these programs to schools that have nothing.”

Mikel Bresee, Community Arts Partnerships (CAP) program director

Opposite, top: CAP students learning the art of photography. Bottom: Students participate in hands-on art activities with trained CAP instructors.

The Next Generation

According to Larry Lunsford, assistant director of education and outreach for CAP, another area of focus is introducing Detroit students to careers in the creative economy. Lunsford regularly tells his students that “everything in their life that’s non-biological was designed by an artist: their house, their shoes, their underwear. All of these things were sketched out by an artist before they came to life.” Then he calls on them to consider the profession.

“All these video games that [students] love, and buy, and pay $120 bucks for. I ask, ‘Who here is going to design the next generation? What kind of ethnic flavor can you bring to the next generation of entertainment arts?’”

To support students who are interested in careers in the field, CAP launched a training program that prepares Detroit artists to become teaching artists, leading youth arts education programs across the city. The training focuses on curriculum development, classroom management and age- and skill-appropriate activities. To date, CAP has trained and employed 195 Detroit community artists who have multiplied the impact by working with young people across the city.

Alijah Dillard ’18, Transportation Design, said he had his first experience with CAP in fifth grade, and eventually went on to serve as a teaching artist himself, earning money to pay for school while giving back to his community. “CAP not only shaped me as an artist, but also gave me the unique opportunity to give back to Detroit,” he said.

Fatima Sow ‘14, Art Practice (Fine Arts) — now an arts educator — had her first CAP encounter as a 10th grader at Cass Technical High School. Then, in her freshman year at CCS, CAP hired Sow as a work-study student. And in her sophomore year, she went through the training to become an instructor.

“It was through CAP that I discovered my interest in teaching,” said Sow who, after graduation, went on to work in arts education at Cranbrook Museum, the Detroit Institute of Arts (DIA), then as a full-time art teacher in K-8 schools in the metro Detroit area.

“I always told myself that, as long as I’m living in the city, I’ll continue to teach with CAP. They provided me with an umbrella of resources that I feel is imperative for students in Detroit.”

To help students like Sow and Dillard prepare for art and design careers, The Fisher Foundation endowed a permanent scholarship that helps Brightmoor students attend CCS’s Precollege Summer Experience, where they learn how to prepare their portfolios and receive crucial coaching to present the very best applications.

“Arts education is not a luxury, it is essential,” said Marjorie Fisher Furman, vice chair of the foundation. “Our partners in CCS and the families in Brightmoor provide us the opportunity to work together to ensure creative youth have access to the world-class instruction and inspiration CCS is uniquely positioned to share. We’re grateful to be a part of this special relationship.”

Larry Lunsford, assistant director of Education and Outreach for Community Arts Partnerships (CAP)

— Fatima Sow

Opposite: CAP has trained and employed 195 Detroit community artists who have multiplied the impact by working with young people across the city.

“It was through CAP that I discovered my interest in teaching. I always told myself that, as long as I’m living in the city, I’ll continue to teach with CAP. They provided me with an umbrella of resources that I feel is imperative for students in Detroit.”

Opposite, top: Prayer Park, a project of the Detroit Neighborhood Arts Corps (DNAC). The DNAC pairs talented high school students with professional teaching artists on murals, art exhibitions and events that celebrate and beautify the city's neighborhoods. Bottom: Community+public arts:Detroit (CPAD) emphasizes public visual arts projects in the Brightmoor, Chadsey-Condon, Cody-Rouge, North End, Osborn and Southwest neighborhoods.

Public Art Initiatives

In 2007, The Skillman Foundation provided funds for CAP to take its work much further — through the DETROIT NEIGHBORHOOD ARTS CORPS (DNAC). The corps brought youth outreach and community beautification together as talented high school students began to work with professional teaching artists on murals, art exhibitions and events that celebrate and beautify Detroit neighborhoods.

“[Through DNAC] the kids that showed an aptitude or interest were able to work with artists to build up a portfolio that they could use to apply to college. It shifted, in many ways, their notion of what an artist was, and it put to work a number of Detroit artists who wanted to work in the community and who wanted to work with young people,” said Sharnita C. Johnson, arts program director for the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation and formerly a senior program officer at The Skillman Foundation.

And in 2008, with funding from The Skillman Foundation, The Kresge Foundation and JPMorgan Chase, CCS launched the COMMUNITY+PUBLIC ARTS:DETROIT (CPAD) visual arts program in Brightmoor, Chadsey-Condon, Cody-Rouge, North End, Osborn and Southwest.

Through CPAD, more youth participated in public art projects in conjunction with professional artists — producing high-quality artwork that expressed the unique character of their communities. And working with Detroit’s Summer Youth Employment Programs, 14 Detroit teens who were employed on CPAD projects received compensation — about $1,000 each, on average — in the first year alone.

Then in 2016, the URBAN NEIGHBORHOOD INITIATIVE ’s (UNI) SOUTHWEST URBAN ARTS MURAL PROGRAM (SUAMP) grew out of this long-term partnership. For nearly a decade, CCS teaching artists had provided training and led mural workshops with hundreds of UNI students — painting garages and vacant properties across southwest Detroit. UNI and CCS shared CAP Teaching Artist Eduardo Gonzalez, who continues to lead the SUAMP program as a UNI employee with behind-the-scenes support from CCS.

“When I participated in the mural program, I realized I really enjoyed painting and that art could be a viable career,” said Gonzalez. After working with a CCS instructor on his art school portfolio, Gonzalez said, “I realized I also really wanted to help underprivileged students like myself the way my CAP instructors mentored me.”

These days, CCS is taking this work even further. With grants from The Kresge Foundation, the Fred A. and Barbara M. Erb Family Foundation, and the Community Foundation of Southeast Michigan, CCS partnered with community organizations on a project along the last natural bend of Fox Creek in the Jefferson-Chalmers neighborhood. The land houses the Fox Creek Artscape — a new community arts project completed in 2019, featuring a pavilion, produce stand, public arts space, and landscaped garden — that was designed and executed in partnership with Feedom Freedom Growers and the Oakland Avenue Artists Coalition, as well as a considerable number of Jefferson-Chalmers community members.

Eduardo Gonzalez, Urban Neighborhood Initiative and Community Arts Partnerships (CAP) teaching artist

“[Through DNAC] the kids that showed an aptitude or interest were able to work with artists to build up a portfolio that they could use to apply to college. It shifted, in many ways, their notion of what an artist was, and it put to work a number of

Detroit artists who wanted to work in the community and who wanted to work with young people.”

— Sharnita C. Johnson

Henry Ford Academy: School for Creative Studies

When HENRY FORD ACADEMY: SCHOOL FOR CREATIVE STUDIES (HFA: SCS) opened in the A. Alfred Taubman Center for Design Education in September 2009, it was a bold idea taking flight: An institution dedicated to post-secondary education would take on the responsibility of a tuition-free, public charter school providing art and design education to middle and high school students. Richard Rogers had been an elementary school teacher early in his career and had long harbored the dream of opening a school. But he had not yet encountered a viable opportunity to make it a reality. The development of the Argonaut Building site, which would become the Taubman Center, presented a unique opportunity for CCS’s expansion to evolve beyond additional space for dormitories and studios.

Rogers and his team could begin to entertain possibilities that included merging the College’s mission with a broader mission of engagement with the City of Detroit — an integrated educational community, focused on art and design education, that could attract, develop and retain talent in creative industries, help revitalize the infrastructure of Detroit’s New Center district, and create jobs and new business possibilities.

Equally important, HFA: SCS would address the critical shortage of high-performing schools in the city and the accelerating disappearance of art and design curriculums in secondary education. Without these crucial programs, local students in the predominantly African American Detroit Public School system would have no clear path to CCS in particular or art school in general. The charter school would help bolster student achievement in art and design and prepare interested students for the creative professions.

“Even before the Taubman Center possibility arose, the Leadership Team was working really hard on the development of a charter school,” Rogers explained. “We were working with the THOMPSON FOUNDATION and HENRY FORD LEARNING INSTITUTE (HFLI). And we were going to put it somewhere; before Matt Cullen brought the Argonaut Building to our attention, we didn’t know where. But the school was very much a part of a larger community engagement strategy for CCS.” Once the project was off and running, philanthropists BOB AND ELLEN THOMPSON committed $17 million through the Thompson Foundation to develop the schools facilities. The FORD MOTOR COMPANY FUND provided significant support for program development.

It was Steve Hamp who initially introduced the idea to Rogers about partnering with CCS. Former president of The Henry Ford and founder of Henry Ford Learning Institute, Hamp had started Henry Ford Academy, which resided inside the museum. The school was dedicated to “creating public schools in public spaces,” a model that appealed to Rogers. “With all the outreach work CCS had done,” Hamp said, “its activities go far beyond the campus, and that was something that we shared. We always felt that institutions like ours have a responsibility, and an opportunity, to play roles well beyond the walls of the institution. We shared that thought.”

Anne Beck, CCS vice president for Administration and Finance, and Julie Hingelberg, vice president for Enrollment and Student Services, served along with Rogers on the school’s five-member board, Creative Urban Education. Nancy Lausch, former professor and chair of Art Education, and Provost Imre Molnar worked tirelessly liaising between the school’s art faculty and CCS’s, whose members volunteered time and teaching hours — and continue to do so.

In its first year, Henry Ford Academy: School for Creative Studies enrolled 408 students in grades 6, 7 and 9, progressively increasing enrollment to 880 students in grades 6 through 12 in the Taubman Center. (Grades K-5 were added on another site in 2012.) Each year, CCS committed to offering full scholarships to the top 10 graduates in each class. The opportunity for students at HFA: SCS to learn and thrive in the Taubman Center’s integrated learning community was enormous.

For 10 years, Rogers and CCS co-managed HFA: SCS with the Henry Ford Learning Institute. In 2019, management of the school, now known as UNIVERSITY PREP ART & DESIGN (UPAD), transferred to the University Prep Schools organization. For Rogers, however, that the school endures and its students thrive are the best possible outcomes. As of 2019, University Prep Art & Design, graduates 97 percent of its students.

Nancy Lausch, former Professor and Chair of Art Education

Steve Hamp, founder of Henry Ford Academy (Dearborn) and advisor on the Taubman Center redevelopment

Opposite, top: Through the Thompson Foundation, Ellen and Bob Thompson provided critical funding to launch the Henry Ford Academy: School for Creative Studies. Bottom: A classroom at University Prep Art & Design, a K-12, public charter school with a focus on art and design.

Matthew Clayson, founding director, Detroit Creative Corridor Center (DC3)

From DC3 to Design Core: Driving Detroit’s Creative Economy

“We believed that the creative industries were underserved and underrepresented in the city of Detroit, and that there needed to be this initiative to develop programming to support those industries, especially those looking to grow businesses in the creative sector,” said Founding Director Matthew Clayson, who led the DETROIT CREATIVE CORRIDOR CENTER (DC3) from 2010 to 2015.

A partnership between CCS and Business Leaders for Michigan (BLM), DC3’s work also set out to ensure that Detroit’s intersection of designers, fine and performing artists, digital media firms, advertising agencies and architecture firms could establish a “firm footprint” in the Downtown, Midtown and New Center areas. A focus on business acceleration helped creatives with individual practices grow into more collaborative team-based enterprises. Business attraction helped bring design-driven industries to Detroit and provided them with the soft-landing services they would need to thrive. And talent advancement created platforms for creatives to share their work with a national and global audience.

These three strategies enabled DC3 to help grow Detroit’s creative industries and provide necessary and — what was in the early 2000s — largely absent support in the creative sector. They also led to the first Detroit Design Festival in summer 2011 and, eventually, DC3’s ability to lobby for and secure the UNESCO “City of Design” designation.

Led by Founding Director Melinda Anderson, the Detroit Design Festival began as a week and is now a month of art, performances, panels and showcases. “Erik and Israel Nordin (’99, Craft and Material Studies) did a very casual furniture show with Crain’s Detroit House Party,” Clayson recalled. “Mary Kramer (Crain’s Detroit Business) offered some advertising and editorial coverage for us. It was as grassroots as grassroots can be — scrappy, no budget, nothing like that.” Over the course of five days, more than 10,000 people attended 80 community-sourced events, including lectures, installations, panel discussions and fashion showcases.

The festival generated enough buzz to create momentum for the next year. THE KRESGE FOUNDATION awarded DC3 a grant that enabled them to give $35,000 in micro grants to artists and designers who wanted to work with the organization. In 2012, on a budget of $5,000, Nina Marcus-Kurlonko created Eastern Market After Dark, a small, districtbased event of open studios, galleries and entertainment, that has become a Detroit art scene mainstay.

Clayson credits such events, particularly the Design Festival, with bolstering DC3’s UNESCO “City of Design” strategy. “It helped us develop the vehicle and the tools to start building international relationships with the Grazs of the world, the St. Étiennes of the world, the Torinos of the world, the Mexico Citys of the world.”

In June 2015, Richard Rogers and CCS Trustee Don Manvel traveled to Graz, Austria, recently named a “City of Design” by UNESCO, the United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organization. The designation recognizes cities demonstrating a legacy of, and a commitment to, creativity as a tool for economic development. Upon his return, Rogers asked DC3 staff to consider applying for designation on behalf of Detroit and they began to explore the opportunity and to develop relationships with other UNESCO “Cities of Design.”

“There aren’t many private art and design colleges running economic development initiatives. Design Core is evidence of Rick’s commitment to the city and its economic future — his strong and passionate belief that creative people have a strong part in that future.”

— Olga Stella

Olga Stella, executive director, Design Core Detroit

Opposite: Drinks x Design artist installation.

Photo by Erada Svetlana. Courtesy Design Core Detroit.

DC3 was ready to apply — and compete against other U.S. cities — a six-month process led by Ellie Schneider, current director of Detroit City of Design, that was intentionally drafted by a community of stakeholders and not any one person. An important piece for the UNESCO application was establishing an advisory board across Detroit’s creative spectrum — an art, business, philanthropy and civic collaboration that Clayson says “created a nice foundation for Detroit City of Design Network that the Design Core team launched two years later.”

Detroit became the first U.S. city to be recognized by UNESCO as a “City of Design” in 2015 and joined the UNESCO Creative Cities Network, a group that now comprises 180 cities in 72 countries, each aiming to place creativity and cultural industries at the core of development plans at the local level while actively cooperating at the international level.

In 2017, DC3 engaged 1,000 community members to develop the Detroit City of Design Action Plan, an ambitious vision to drive growth in Detroit through the practice of inclusive design, which considers the entire spectrum of cultural diversity and individual experiences to create solutions with a social impact.

The following year, the Detroit Creative Corridor Center was renamed DESIGN CORE DETROIT to reflect an evolution of programs and services beyond the Woodward Corridor to position the broader city as a global source of creative talent.

Design Core eventually launched the Detroit Design Network to serve Detroit’s design business community and expanded the Detroit Design Festival from a week-long to a monthlong celebration. During its first Detroit Month of Design, Design Core attracted more than 40,000 visitors to dozens of events across the city. Design Core has helped more than 300 businesses per year grow and prosper in the city, leading to the creation of more than 3,000 jobs.

SHINOLA Founder Tom Kartsotis decided to start his watch and bicycle manufacturing business in Detroit and base it at the Taubman Center. Established in 2012, Shinola became a unique addition to what was then still an experiment. “It was a bold move for the College to become Shinola’s landlord,” said Olga Stella, executive director of the organization since 2016. “Watch manufacturing was not being done at scale in the United States at the time; Rick could have just said ‘No, thank you,’ but he was willing to take a risk on it, and he was right.”

“DC3 played a critical role in bringing Shinola to Detroit,” recalled Rick Rogers.

“The Detroit Economic Growth Corporation suggested that Tom Kartsotis meet with Matt Clayson. Matt showed him the Taubman Center and introduced him to CCS faculty. He decided he wanted to locate the business in Detroit at the TC and asked to meet with me to discuss it. I agreed because we had always wanted businesses in the TC that would be compatible with the educational activities going on there.”

In the coming years, Shinola would partner with CCS on design studios, advise on the Fashion Accessories Design major, host student interns, hire alumni and help to attract new creative businesses to Detroit.

“There aren’t many private design colleges running economic development initiatives,” said Stella. “Design Core is evidence of Rick’s commitment to the city and its economic future — his strong and passionate belief that creative people have an important part in that future.”

Recalling the early days of this unique organization, Clayson noted: “I wasn’t a fundraiser or a not-for-profit director. Fortunately, Rick Rogers, Doug Rothwell (CEO, Business Leaders for Michigan) and Sabrina Keeley (COO for Business Leaders for Michigan) opened a lot of doors to help. Business Leaders for Michigan and CCS raised about $400,000 to get this initiative started. It gave us a strong start. But we had to figure out how to raise additional funds.”

Clayson raised $5 million for DC3’s programming — but not from sources that might take money away from Detroit artists. DC3 sought economic development funding and proved what we now know: that an investment in art and design can be a significant investment in the growth of creative industries and the city.

Opposite, top: During its first Detroit Month of Design, Design Core Detroit attracted more than 40,000 visitors to dozens of events across the city. Bottom: View of Shinola's factory and offices in the Taubman Center, where the company manufactures watches and small leather goods.

Melinda Anderson, founding director of the Detroit Design Festival

Don Manvel, CCS Trustee, who was the link between Detroit and Graz, Austria, a UNESCO “City of Design”

No Strings Attached

In 2007, Rip Rapson, president and CEO of The Kresge Foundation, asked several Detroit arts institutions to develop proposals for a new fellowship program that could support local artists. The foundation does not award individual artists directly, but was intent on amplifying its commitment both to the development of Detroit artists and to the city’s revitalization. In response, Rick Rogers tasked Nina Holden (former CCS vice president for Institutional Advancement) and Michelle Perron, then director of CCS’s Center Galleries, with working on a concept and submitting the proposal.

“For a long time, the Detroit art scene suffered from an identity crisis. Support was limited, patronage was practically nonexistent, and the artists had to forge ahead on their own, creating their own venues, and making their own opportunities,” said Perron. Awarded a grant from The Kresge Foundation, KRESGE ARTS IN DETROIT was born, led by Perron as its founding director and Rick Rogers and Alice Carle as co-chairs of the first advisory council. Administered by the College for Creative Studies, the new fellowship offered $25,000 awards to emerging and established metro Detroit artists in a range of disciplines. The fellowships are awarded with no strings attached, enabling artists to use the funds for whatever they might need to advance their individual practices. In addition, Kresge Arts in Detroit offers artist professional development [designed and delivered for the first 10 years by Creative Many] to promote themselves, build a website and become entrepreneurs for the creative economy.

In addition to the fellowships (20 annually), Kresge Arts in Detroit recognized one artist each year with THE KRESGE EMINENT ARTIST AWARD , a $50,000 unrestricted award for a lifetime of professional achievement. And when Gilda Snowden, a beloved CCS faculty member who had mentored thousands of artists during her 33 years at the College for Creative Studies, passed away suddenly in 2014, Kresge Arts in Detroit launched the GILDA AWARD for emerging artists in her honor.

“Kresge Arts in Detroit doesn’t patronize artists as some entity ‘saving’ Detroit, or treat our work like it had no intrinsic worth prior to the fellowship award,” said Chace “Mic Write” Morris, a 2013 Literary Fellow. “Detroit artists are incredibly savvy, plenty knowledgeable, and our work is coveted and co-opted the world over. With the tools of Kresge Arts in Detroit, artists are supported to create whatever level of sustainability we desire individually, while nurturing the possibility of collaboration between fellows.”

Kresge Arts in Detroit celebrated its 10th anniversary in 2019; as of 2020, 252 metro Detroit artists have been awarded more than $6 million. “So many cities do not fully and joyfully acknowledge, celebrate and support the vibrancy that artists bring to our lives,” said Christina deRoos, Kresge Arts in Detroit director since 2016. “We’re proud to have a legacy that’s focused on Detroit artists since the program’s inception, and that evolves and builds every year thanks to the incredible support and collaboration with CCS, The Kresge Foundation and our community of Detroit artists.”

Rip Rapson explained: “The arts are a vital force in Detroit. [Kresge] artists speak to tradition and experimentation. They illuminate stark truths and they light the imagination. They craft narratives of our time and they ensure timeless truths are not forgotten. Our community is more deeply connected because of artists like these woven into our cultural fabric. It is an honor to be able to support them and to elevate their work.”

Christina deRoos, director of Kresge Arts in Detroit

Michelle Perron, founding director of Kresge Arts in Detroit

Our community is more deeply connected because of artists like these woven into our cultural fabric.

— Rip Rapson

Opposite: Gilda Snowden, Art Practice (Fine Arts) professor. Photograph by Tannisha Rheid.

A Community Anchor

Since 1998, the College for Creative Studies has held dozens of lectures and programs. While these educational programs have been central to the College’s interdisciplinary curriculum and attended by CCS students and faculty alike, they have also attracted artists and designers, critics, students, art lovers, scholars and leaders from across the region.

“Endowed lecture series are very common in colleges and universities. And we didn’t have one when I arrived at CCS. The idea that we would have money from an endowment to bring in artists from around the country and around the world was very appealing to me,” Rogers recalled.

Funded via an anonymous gift, the WOODWARD LECTURE SERIES is one of Southeast Michigan’s most prominent visiting speaker series. Since its launch in 1998, the lectures have attracted more than 100 influential artists, including multimedia artist Kara Walker, critic and poet Andrei Codrescu, photographer and multimedia artist Carrie Mae Weems, painter and printmaker Elizabeth Murray, sculptor John Chamberlain, artist and performer Juliana Huxtable, sculptor Richard Hunt, ceramicist Michael Lucero, glass artist Dale Chihuly, and many more.

The TOYOTA LECTURE SERIES was launched a couple of years later, and Board Chair Keith Crain and Vice Chair Heinz Prechter played key roles. “They both had very good relationships with the president of Toyota North America at the time, Toshiaki “Tag” Taguchi, as well as the chairman of the Board of Toyota,” Rogers explained. “Toyota was already sponsoring projects. We also had alumni working at Toyota. But we didn’t have much of a relationship with them. And we ended up developing a good relationship not only with Tag but also with the Toyota design leadership.”

Toyota made a $1 million endowment gift to establish the lecture series, which continues to attract high-caliber speakers. In spring 2019, fashion designer Anna Sui spoke to hundreds gathered at the Taubman Center’s GM Auditorium for the College’s first-ever Fashion Symposium. Other speakers have included nationally and internationally renowned industrial designers, artistic directors, graphic artists, automobile designers and more.

Speakers have included Beijing Olympics Design Director Min Wang, car designer and former Senior Vice President of Nissan Motor Co. Shiro Nakamura, graphic designer Stefan Sagmeister, transmedia artist April Greiman and industrial designer and concept artist Syd Mead. Artists and designers in both lecture series typically engage with CCS students beyond the podium in workshops, studios and conversations.

And the College’s CONTINUING EDUCATION programs — for youth, teens and adults — charge a low fee to feed creative spirits across the region.

Under the tutelage of CCS faculty members, children and teens create animated cartoons, plush toys, digital photos, graphic novels, action figures, stop-motion films, wearable art, self-portraits, T-shirts, enameled jewelry, welded sculptures, short stories and prototype toys. Adults learn to weave on looms, forge metal objects, draw botanical subjects, blow glass and more.

“Rick had the vision and guts to really professionalize the College,” Perron said, discussing CCS’s legacy of public programming. “Not only did he strengthen a local college of art and design into one with an international reputation — he also created a community anchor.”

“Rick had the vision and guts to really professionalize the College. Not only did he strengthen a local college of art and design into one with an international reputation — he also created a community anchor.”

— Michelle Perron

Opposite: Toyota Lecture Series speaker and fashion designer Anna Sui talks with a Fashion Accessories Design student at CCS’s first-ever Fashion Symposium.

I believe that a college that teaches creativity should be an exemplar of creativity itself. Creativity is about change. The job of artists and designers is to change the way things are: to make things that didn’t exist before; to change environments, communications, tools; to change the way we see; to help us understand in new ways; to make life better than it was yesterday. [2011]

Artists are the principal bearers of the creative spirit. Creativity is what makes us more than just passive passengers on the ship of time. It is the animating force that compels us to move forward, not simply what makes us human, but what allows us to be better humans … The creative spirit pursues the search for truth wherever it leads, unfazed by political, cultural or ideological obstacles. It is subversive, and it puts the deniers of freedom in jeopardy.

[2002]

The lesson of a CCS education is that quality isn’t just contained in the work you produce. It’s in your attitude. It’s a disposition, a state of mind. It’s in the process and the effort. It’s in the value you place on what you do. It’s in your ability to critique yourself, to hold yourself accountable to high standards, and to push those standards ever higher. [2018]

The Detroit Society of Arts and Crafts was founded “to encourage good and beautiful work as applied to useful service.” Useful service can be a watchword for you. Don’t just ask if you’re good at what you do; ask if what you do creates good.

Believe deeply in the value of art and design. You can make a difference in others’ lives. With your abilities to see in new ways, you can remake the world. [2014]

In June 2019, Alumna and Trustee Molly Valade and her husband Mark hosted a Trustee reception to celebrate Keith Crain and Richard Rogers on their retirements from CCS. Reflecting on the past 25 years, Rogers praised Crain as “the best Board chair a college president could possibly have.”

He expressed gratitude to the many people who had helped to achieve the successes of his tenure — the Trustees, his Leadership Team, the faculty and staff of the College, donors and supporters, and his family, above all his wife Susan who introduced him to design, decided they should move to Detroit, taught at CCS for 20 years, and was his partner in everything he did there. Summing up his career at the College, he said: “The idea was to build a world-class higher education institution deeply engaged in its community, and to pursue quality every day. I hope that’s what we did.”

contributed to the transformation of CCS from a struggling institution whose accreditation was threatened to one of the best art and design colleges in the world, ranked the number three design school in the United States by LinkedIn.

Rogers believed that a college with the word “creative” in its name needed to be an exemplar of what he often called “the creative spirit.” He believed in change and in quality. He thought that an institution could not sit still. If it wasn’t changing and growing and moving forward — always trying to raise its level of quality — then it was going backwards. During the time that he and Keith Crain led CCS, it indeed moved forward and rose in quality and reputation; and it helped Detroit move forward, too.

At the reception, current Board Chair James M. Nicholson spoke of Crain’s “vision of creating the highest quality Board of Trustees in the community. If you take a look at our Board roster today, you can easily see the success of that endeavor.” It was Crain’s “passion for the school,” he said, that marshaled the resources and support that made the College’s progress possible.

Your CCS education has made you masters of change. You have the ability to help others cope with uncertainty. You can reinvent not just yourselves but the world around you. You can envision realities that others can’t see, realities of greater civic harmony, mutual respect, fairness, compassion, commitment to democratic ideals, care for our planet. [2019]

Anyone reading the preceding pages would have to conclude: “Mission accomplished.” The College for Creative Studies that Rogers left in 2019 is an entirely different institution than the one he joined in 1994. A new name, a singular focus on the value of art and design to society, an array of degree programs ranging from the traditional arts to the most high-tech design disciplines, including graduate programs, an illustrious faculty drawn from around the world, a group of highly professional student support services and administrative functions, a doubling of enrollment, a vast physical expansion, financial health including a nearly 12-fold increase in the endowment, philanthropic gifts totaling more than a quarter of a billion dollars, and a “national model” for community engagement, including free art education and public sculpture in neighborhoods, a K-12 charter school, enhanced non-credit classes for children and adults, an economic development center, provocative public lectures, a fellowship program for individual artists — all these factors

Nicholson then commented that “the College’s remarkable growth story starts with Rick Rogers.”

He said that Rogers’ “remarkably effective, low-key style” produced ambitious strategic plans that led to enrollment growth, a profound impact on Detroit’s comeback, and “a reputation as one of the world’s centers for creativity.”

“That reputation,” Nicholson concluded, “is thanks to Rick and the CCS team focusing on students and student success. ...Our graduates do exceptionally well in our modern economy thanks to the efforts of Rick’s CCS family.”

Under the leadership of President Don Tuski, the College for Creative Studies will continue to move forward and advance its mission of nurturing creativity in service to its students, its community and society. In this time of severe challenges, of a pandemic and a quest for racial justice, that mission has never been more important. CCS has the resilience to meet those challenges — and become stronger as a result — because of the people who lead it, who make it work and who support it. CCS will always change to pursue quality. It will always sustain the creative spirit.

SUSTAINING THE CREATIVE SPIRIT

“CCS’s reputation is thanks to Rick and the CCS team focusing on students and student success. Our graduates do exceptionally well in our modern economy thanks to the efforts of Rick’s CCS family.”

— James M. Nicholson

At Commencement each May, President Richard L. Rogers issued a “charge” to the graduates. Rogers wanted to express his views on the social value of art and design and to encourage graduates to use their skills with this purpose in mind: to make society better. Here are excerpts from some of those speeches.

Opposite: Rick Rogers and Keith Crain at CCS Commencement.

Lynn F. Alandt*

Wendell W. Anderson, Jr.

J. T. Battenberg III

Wolfgang Bernhard

Robert H. Bluestein*

Thomas C. Buhl*

Darrell Burks*

Joseph Buttigieg III

Moray S. Callum*

Frank Campanale*

Thomas Celani*

Thomas Clark, Jr.

Lois Pincus Cohn*

Van E. Conway

Frank Couzens, Jr.

Gary L. Cowger*

KC Crain*

Keith E. Crain

Matthew P. Cullen*

Gretchen Davidson

Peter Dow

Linda Dresner*

C. Beth DunCombe

John R. Edman

Esther Gordy Edwards

COLLEGE FOR CREATIVE STUDIES TRUSTEES 1994–2019

Nicole Eisenberg*

Irma B. Elder

Suzy Farbman

James D. Farley

David T. Fischer

Alfred J. Fisher III*

Nathan M. Forbes*

Edsel B. Ford II

Thomas Gale

Mara Kalnins Ghafari*

Yousif Ghafari

Ralph Gilles*

E. Mark Gregory

Nancy Grosfeld*

Phil Guarascio

George Hamilton

Sheila F. Hamp

David M. Hempstead*

John W. Ingle III*

Richard J. Janes

Charles Jordan

Danialle Karmanos*

Josephine Kessler

William Kessler

Margaret LaRou

Thomas LaSorda

Joseph Laymon

James Lentz

Maria Leonhauser

David Baker Lewis

Kathleen Lewis

Mado Lie

Seth M. Lloyd

Alphonse S. Lucarelli*

Richard Manoogian

Don Manvel*

Jerome P. Montopoli

James M. Nicholson*

Thomas D. Ogden

Dominic Pangborn

William U. Parfet*

Roger S. Penske

Norman Peslar

Sandra E. Pierce

Stephen R. Polk*

Heinz Prechter

Waltraud E. Prechter*

James E. Press

John Psarouthakis

John Rakolta, Jr.

Anne M. Regling

Michael T. Ritchie*

Sydney L. Ross*

Robert Rossiter

Samuel Sachs II

Peter Schweitzer

Lloyd A. Semple

Dominic Silvio

Michael P. Simcoe*

Harold Skramstad, Jr.

Maxine B. Snider

Anthony L. Soave*

Eleanor F. Sullivan

Judith Tappero

Duane Tarnacki

A. Alfred Taubman

William S. Taubman*

Nancy Tellem*

Molly P. Valade*

Samuel Valenti III

James H. Vandenberghe*

Edward T. Welburn, Jr.*

Marcia Wiltshire

*Denotes current Trustee, 2020

Writer and Editor: Lillien Waller

Additional Writing: Erin Spanier

Art Director: Katie Kunesh

Keith Crain said, “You get the right people, everything hums.” Over the last quarter century, CCS has been fortunate to have hundreds of the right people in all areas of the institution — from the Board of Trustees to the Leadership Team to the faculty to the administrative staff. On the preceding two pages, and throughout this magazine, are just a few of the many people past and present who have supported Rick Rogers’ leadership with their time, talent and expertise. Together they have made, and are making, CCS hum.

Previous page, first row, left to right: Lisa Rigstad, Dayna Davis, Alphonse S. Lucarelli, Matthew P. Cullen, Molly P. Valade, Tim Flattery, Sara Abbate, Carla Gonzalez, James H. Vandenberghe, Paul Snyder. Second row: Kim Harty, Dr. Donald L. Tuski, Tyanna Buie, Bill Rauhauser, Megan Mesack, Larry Carter, Dr. Vince Carducci, Robert Schefman, Kunihisa Ito, Todd Erickson. Third row: Nadine Ashton, Lynn F. Alandt, Kerri McKay, Dr. Michael Stone Richards, Elena Arnaoutova, Kristin Koch, Lillien Waller, Bryon Fitzpatrick, Aletha Jordan, David M. Hempstead. Fourth row: Mara Kalnins Ghafari, Sabrina Nelson, Carlos Diaz, Kate Lees, Terry Neubacher, Dr. Mary McNichols, Sally Erickson Wilson, Heinz Prechter, Sharon Procter, Terese Nehra, Fifth row: Edward T. Welburn, Jr., Dr. Dorothy Kostuch, Michael Coleman, Gary L. Cowger, Lois Pincus Cohn, Waltraud E. Prechter, John Taylor, Nina Holden, Lester Johnson, Matthew Holland. Opposite: Maria Luisa Rossi, Professor and Chair, works with MFA Systems Design Thinking students.

BOARD OF TRUSTEES

James M. Nicholson, Chair

Lynn F. Alandt, Vice Chair

Alphonse S. Lucarelli, Secretary

James H. Vandenberghe, Treasurer

Robert H. Bluestein

Thomas C. Buhl

Darrell Burks

Moray S. Callum

Frank Campanale

Thomas Celani

Lois Pincus Cohn

Gary L. Cowger

KC Crain

Matthew P. Cullen

Linda Dresner

Nicole Eisenberg

Alfred J. Fisher III

Nathan M. Forbes

Mara Kalnins Ghafari

Ralph Gilles

Nancy Grosfeld

David M. Hempstead

John W. Ingle III

Danialle Karmanos

Don Manvel

William U. Parfet

Stephen R. Polk

Waltraud E. Prechter

Michael T. Ritchie

Sydney L. Ross

Michael P. Simcoe

Anthony L. Soave

William S. Taubman

Nancy Tellem

Donald L. Tuski, President

Molly P. Valade

Edward T. Welburn, Jr.

COVER ARTWORK

Photograph of Richard L. Rogers, president of CCS 1994 — 2019, by Jenny Risher '97, Photography.