School of Art continues to face growing challenges

BY STEVEN MATTHEWS Staff Writer

The Long Beach State School of Art has had an above average increase in students, mostly bolstered by first-time freshmen, who immediately have additional challenges as soon as they start classes.

According to the CSULB Institutional Research & Analytics database, the School of Art had an increase of 27% in freshmen from Fall 2021 to Fall 2022.

Over the last five years, the School of Art has been one of few programs to see an increase of over 50% freshmen enrollees. Over the same period, the overall student count of the School of Art went up 22.8%.

According to the School of Art’s administration, the high student count is just the first hurdle for students who then have to deal with losing full-time faculty, old buildings with outdated facilities and a schedule of classes that most students don’t find ideal.

Part of what draws students to the CSULB School of Art is its proximity to the Los Angeles art scene. Being a conduit one of the largest art community in the country carries a reputation, and that reputation is held up in part by the school’s faculty.

The School of Art is slowly losing its full-time faculty. Losing faculty is a problem for many departments and much of the CSU system, but the School of Art continues to trend with a higher rate than average.

One way of measuring full-time faculty is through tenure density. Tenure density is the number of tenured or tenure-tracked professors as a percent of all total lecturers and professors.

Over the last ten years, the tenure density of the School of Art has dropped 14.6%, which dropped significantly more than three-quarters of the university at 6.6%.

Laurie Gatlin is a full-time professor who is the current director of the School of Art. The department’s faculty situation is a concern she thinks about often. She keeps a print of the faculty breakdown under the glass top on her desk for easy reference.

According to Gatlin, the full-time faculty are mostly retiring at a rate higher than the number of new searches authorized by the university.

Gatlin also states that some of the fulltime faculty don’t retire, but they instead get appointed to different positions in which they can’t teach.

When it comes to the number of searches she gets, she has no influence on how many that is, and has no idea on who she should talk to above the dean of the College of the Arts. Gatlin just sends requests to her dean, who then relays those up to the next level, and the answers are eventually relayed back down.

“There’s no transparency to us where those numbers come from; where those decisions are made,” Gatlin said.

Melanie Nuccio is a studio art graduate student who helped organize a group of students and faculty to speak about the growing problems in the School of Art to the California State University Board of Trustees last year on Nov. 15. Nuccio says that losing full-time faculty is costly, not only to students, but the art program as well.

“Not only do you not have these people for [graduate] committees, you also don’t have the structure that mentors the program,” Nuccio said. “They’re [faculty] typically here for two or three decades, they really make the program what it is.”

With full-time faculty not getting replaced, the students must rely more on part-time and adjunct professors.

Part-time faculty don’t spend as much time with students as a full-time professor would. Having to commute to multiple schools to supplement their part-time income doesn’t leave as much time to fill committee positions, monitor labs or mentor students.

The students have to deal with old and outdated studios, labs and facilities, all of which led students last semester to stage a walkout.

Ninth-year lecturer Chelsea Mosher spoke about the building and full-time faculty problems at the same Board of Trustees meeting that Nuccio attended in mid-November.

“Last week, a falling ceiling tile nearly hit my student’s head,” Mosher said to the board. “During the heatwave, I had to escort an ill student to health services. We need 21st century facilities that don’t endanger our students.”

According to Gatlin, the ceiling tiles have been modified and are expected to stay in place better, but handling a heat wave in the old buildings is a different matter.

Course scheduling is another challenge that students in the program face. They often have to deal with disjointed and spreadout class schedules to get all their required classes in.

Karen Warner is the administrative coordinator for the School of Art, and one of her jobs is to organize the class schedule.

Warner has to coordinate over 450 classes and find classrooms with the proper facilities to host them in. She does this while balancing the schedules of a growing number of part-time faculty who have to regularly commute. Warner must do all this while accommodating a growing student population in the same amount of space they’ve had for decades.

“We didn’t use to have an animation program and now it is our biggest program,” Warner said. “So, we’re squeezing all of that and all of those students into the same amount of space.”

Additionally, Warner has had to schedule 6 a.m. classes, a block class that goes up to 10 p.m. on Fridays and even classes on Saturday and Sunday.

“I’m using a lot of creativity in the schedule,” Warner said.

Warner also has to schedule classes around the possibility that the school may experience another heat wave.

Gatlin and Facilities Maintenance collaborated on what they call the high-heat plan.

Despite the old buildings, some of the rooms have air conditioning. If the university experiences another heat wave, the high-heat plan would kick in. Warner has to schedule classes in those rooms that can go online easily if that happens, then the rooms themselves become cooling stations.

Any student that feels overheated can go to the cooling rooms to cool down and return to class when they feel better.