i. institutional support and commitment to continuous improvement

I. Institutional Support and Commitment to Continuous Improvement
skills. In its nearly 150-year history since, the School has become, through multiple transformations,
a leader in contemporary art instruction, marked by daring exploration, rigorous scholarship, and
innovative historical perspective.
After early reorganization due to financial failure and the loss of its first major building in the Chicago
Fire of 1871, the School and its museum—a collection started with a gift of plaster casts from the
French government—were incorporated as the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts in 1879 and, three years
later, as the Art Institute of Chicago. Shortly thereafter, SAIC and the museum moved into facilities
originally erected for the Columbian Exposition of 1893. This facility still houses the museum—with
several additions, including the Renzo Piano-designed Modern Wing, which opened in 2009 and the
Columbus building of the School designed by Walter Netsch of Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill, which
was completed in 1974. SAIC also occupies the nearby MacLean and Sharp buildings; several floors in
the Sullivan Center; and two dormitory residential buildings, one of which houses The Gene Siskel Film
Center on State Street.
In 1903, the then recently established Normal Department of SAIC began granting diplomas for
completing teacher-training coursework. In response to post-World War I needs for practitioners
schooled in the applied arts, a department of industrial arts was added in 1918. By the 1930s, SAIC
was one of the first art schools to require entrance exams and award diplomas for its now four-year
programs of study. Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA) degrees were first awarded when an arrangement with
the University of Chicago allowed SAIC students to take academic courses at an extension site.
The School was the first art school to be accredited by a regional accrediting association (specifically,
the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools or NCA) in 1936 and, in 1944, became one of
twenty-three charter members of what is now known as the National Association of Schools of Art
and Design (NASAD). NCA and NASAD remain the regional and national accrediting agencies for the
School today.
In the half-century after World War II, the School was dramatically influenced by the rapid changes
in contemporary art, which caused a profound departure from the European approach to pedagogy.
Studio instructors encouraged students to search within themselves for elemental impulses to inspire
their art and placed new emphasis on artistic traditions outside of Western culture. Major curricular
changes during this mid-century, postwar period include: the elimination of declaring a major; the
emphasis on detailed, frequent, in-person critiques; and the establishment of a credit/no credit system
in lieu of letter grades. The first in-house literature and composition courses were offered, which
rapidly led to all bachelor’s requirements being taught at SAIC. A required, entry-level curriculum for
undergraduate freshmen was introduced, and is still in place; master-level programs were begun in
art therapy and art history; and, by 1984 a five-year Bachelor of Interior Architecture (BIA) program
was introduced. SAIC exited the 20th century at the vanguard of thinking on how to educate artists
to be public intellectuals who are responsible agents in the world. The School had evolved from a
professional fine art museum school to a college of art that embraced the media and time arts (art
and technology, film and video, sound and performance) and design (interior architecture, visual
communication, and fashion design). One of the most significant outgrowths of that expanded thinking
was the Design Initiative. This curricular initiative, which began in 2000, led directly to the MArch
program, whose history is described below. For SAIC, the conferring of NAAB initial accreditation for
the MArch program would mark a major achievement in the School’s ongoing history of preparing
artists and designers to creatively, intellectually, and responsibly engage the world.
C) Mission of the program
The revised Program Mission statement, completed and adopted in a full AIADO department faculty
meeting on September 13th, 2006, is as follows:
7 | Spring 2011
SECTION I Institutional Support and Commitment to Continuous Improvement