“Center for Innovation and the Arts.”

Spelman College, 13 Dec 2018, https://www.spelman.edu/about-us/office-of-the-president/strategic-planning/center-for-innovation-the-arts. Press Release.

Many of today’s careers require an interdisciplinary approach. The mode of collaboration, popularly known as STEAM (science, technology, engineering, arts and math), is the underlying principle for the design of the new Center for Innovation & the Arts.

Spelman’s demonstrated strength in STEM, coupled with its extraordinary assets in the arts - visual arts, art history, curatorial studies, photography, documentary filmmaking, dance, theater, music, an innovation lab and the Spelman College Museum of Fine Art - positions the College for STEAM, an initiative that encourages innovation, risk-taking, invention and collaborative interdisciplinary work.

“Spelman is investing in the integration of art and technology as the rapid convergence of art, technology, entrepreneurship, the liberal arts and science is yielding new solutions to old challenges,” said Mary Schmidt Campbell, Ph.D., president of Spelman. “The new facility will be a dynamic state-of-the-art learning environment that encourages not only disciplinary mastery in the arts, but provides curricular opportunities for innovative solutions to persistent urban problems. The design of the Center is a catalyst for interdisciplinary interaction. A Forum invites participation from multiple disciplines across campus and a Hive, or network of connected spaces, encourages interdisciplinary experimentation, collaboration, active play and research.”

The Plan for the Center

• Challenges Spelman students to use technology-inspired solutions for urban problems

• Forges ties between the arts, liberal arts and technology

• Creates an entrepreneurship incubator for high performing students

• Establishes high-level partnerships with innovation partners in academia and industry

• Creates a front porch linking Spelman to its Westside community

The new center will be the home for Spelman’s Innovation Lab; house all of Spelman’s arts disciplines; and provide a “front porch” for the community. The facility will cluster together, for the first time in one building, Spelman’s numerous arts departments now scattered across the campus into a vibrant community of innovators, collaborators, artists, musicians and scientists.

With the gift from Ronda Stryker and William Johnston, the College has raised more than one-third of the total cost of the Center, which received it’s first gift from Leonard and Louise Riggio in 2016. The cost of the new facility, which includes an operating endowment and state of the art technology, is $86 million.

A Welcoming Front Porch

The Porch contains community-facing spaces such as a second gallery for the College’s Museum of Fine Art, a dance performance studio, a high-tech digital black box theatre and a small café/retail outlet that faces a public plaza.

Forum

The interactive Forum houses the interdisciplinary Innovation Lab, a collection of maker spaces, several digital media and gaming labs, and a multi-purpose classroom/event space.

The Hive

On the upper two levels is The Hive, a double-height atrium envisioned as a multi-zoned area to enhance learning, teaching, practice and rehearsal, performance and the exchange of ideas across disciplines.

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“Spelman College Receives $30 Million Gift From Trustee Ronda Stryker and Spouse, William Johnston, to Support New Center for Innovation & the Arts.”

Spelman College, 13 Dec 2018, https://www.spelman.edu/about-us/news-and-events/news-releases/2018/12/13/spelman-receives-30-million-gift-from-ronda-stryker-and-william-johnston. Press Release

Spelman College has received the largest gift from living donors in its 137-year history from long-standing Spelman trustee Ronda Stryker and spouse William Johnston. The transformative $30 million gift will help build the Center for Innovation & the Arts, the College’s first new academic facility since 1996.

Chicago architect, Jeanne Gang, founding principal of the firm Studio Gang, has completed a schematic design of the 85,000 square foot building that will occupy a current parking lot at Spelman at the corner of Westview Drive and Lee Street.

“As former educators who believe strongly in social justice, Bill and I have great appreciation for how Spelman provides a superior education for students that encourages them to be global change agents,” said Stryker, a director of the medical equipment company Stryker Corp., as well as vice chair and director of Greenleaf Trust, an investment bank chaired by Johnston.

“Spelman alumnae are leaders across every field imaginable, breaking new ground, while tackling some of the world’s most challenging issues from health disparities to the digital divide. We are thrilled to support a building that will encourage students to master technology, innovation and the arts.”

Stryker has been a trustee of Spelman since 1997 and currently serves as the vice chair of the Spelman College Board of Trustees and chair of the Board’s Arts, Innovation & Technology Committee.

Consistent and extraordinary giving from the Stryker family has had a significant impact on Spelman. Their gift to establish the Gordon-Zeto Center for Global Education, for example, funded the expansion and ongoing operation of the College’s study abroad program. As a result, the Institute of International Education’s Open Doors report notes that Spelman sends more Black students to study abroad than any other baccalaureate college in the country with 75 percent of its 2018 graduating class having studied abroad.

Support from the Stryker family has benefitted numerous other Spelman initiatives, including the Spelman College Museum of Fine Art, science initiatives, summer internships, the Annual Fund, the President’s Safety Net Fund, and renovations to Sisters Chapel and the Wellness Center at Read Hall.

“Ronda Stryker has been staunchly committed to the mission and ideals of Spelman College for more than 20 years. She has been an unstinting advocate for our students and has supported a wide range of strategic initiatives, critical to Spelman’s long term sustainability and the success of our students,” said Mary Schmidt Campbell, Ph.D., president of Spelman.

“With this historic gift, yet again, Ronda’s support will be transformational. Her contribution ensures that Spelman students will be prepared to tackle the challenges of our changing world through innovation, creativity and the dynamic intersection of science, technology, engineering, arts and math (also known as STEAM).”

Including the generous gift from Stryker and Johnston, the College has raised more than one-third of the total cost of the CI&A, which received its first support from Leonard and Louise Riggio in 2016. The cost of the new facility, which includes an operating endowment and state of the art technology, is $86 million.

The Center for Innovation & the Arts

The CI&A enables the College to bring together in one building its considerable strength in STEM with its award-winning programs in the arts. The hub of the building will be the Innovation Lab, co-directed by Brown-Simmons Professor of Computer Science Jerry Volcy, Ph.D., and Associate Professor De Angela Duff, MFA, whose work sits at the intersection of art, design, and technology, in consultation with Senior Adviser Topper Carew, Ph.D., a visiting scholar at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Lab.

For the first time in the College’s history, the same building will house all of Spelman’s arts programs – art, art history, curatorial studies, dance, digital media, documentary filmmaking, photography, music and theater.

A major feature of the building will be its “Front Porch,” an element of the design that opens up the entrance of the CI&A to the Westside community and offers a set of ground floor amenities. They include an expansion of the award-winning Spelman College Museum of Fine Art, a digital theater housing publicly accessible performances, technology events, film screenings and a cafe.

A schematic of the CI&A demonstrates the innovation and intentionality behind creating a unique interdisciplinary environment. The facility will offer different scales of gathering and assorted modes of connecting and collaborating for learning and risk taking in the liberal arts.

ARTS@Spelman New Programming

Under the leadership of award-winning, innovative independent filmmaker, Ayoka Chenzira, Ph.D., division chair for the Arts, Arts@Spelman has developed a new initiative and several new majors and minors that join Music and Theater & Performance including:

• Documentary Filmmaking (major)

• Photography (major)

• Dance Performance & Choreography (major)

• Art History (major)

• Curatorial Studies (minor)

• Atlanta University Center Collective for the Study of Art History and Curatorial Studies, funded with a recent gift from the Walton Family Foundation

Several distinguished faculty have joined Spelman in the past three years either as permanent or distinguished visitors. They include photographer Myra Greene, filmmaker Julie Dash, director/performer/choreographer Aku Kadogo and playwright Will Power. Art historians and curators, Cheryl Finley, Ph.D., associate professor at Cornell University, and Lowery Stokes Sims, Ph.D., former curator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and former executive director of the Studio Museum in Harlem, serve as senior advisers to the Art History and Curatorial Studies Collective. Andrea Barnwell-Brownlee, Ph.D., also a member of the Art History and Curatorial Studies Collective and director of the Spelman Museum, was recently named Atlanta’s Best Curator by Atlanta Magazine.

About Spelman College

Founded in 1881, Spelman College is a leading liberal arts college widely recognized as the global leader in the education of women of African descent. Located in Atlanta, the College’s picturesque campus is home to 2,100 students. Spelman is the country’s leading producer of Black women who complete Ph.D.s in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM). The College’s status is confirmed by U.S. News and World Report, which ranked Spelman No. 51 among all liberal arts colleges and No. 1 among historically Black colleges and universities. The Wall Street Journal ranked the College No. 3, nationally, in terms of student satisfaction. Outstanding alumnae include Children’s Defense Fund Founder Marian Wright Edelman, Starbucks Group President and COO Rosalind Brewer, former Acting Surgeon General and Spelman’s first alumna President Audrey Forbes Manley, global bioinformatics geneticist Janina Jeff and authors Pearl Cleage and Tayari Jones. For more information, visit www.spelman.edu.

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