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Strategic Visioning Announcement from CalArts President Ravi Rajan to the CalArts Community

Now that we are fully immersed in the fall 2018 semester, it is time to begin work on our historically large and significantStrategicVisioningProject. This initiative, which will span two-years upon completion, hopes to engage students, faculty, staff, alumni, trustees, cultural influencers, and others – CalArtians past, present, and future – in a dialogue about where CalArts is today, and what the Institute’s trajectory might look like for the next 50-years.

The goal of this project is also to engage as many people as possible in this process. To help make this happen, a Steering Committee made up of the four special trustees (faculty, staff, student, and alumni), the board chair, and members of the senior management will work with the academic council, deans council, staff council, student union, and alumni council, as well as faculty, staff, students, and alumni directly, to ensure that there are full opportunities for the entire community to connect with the consultants leading the Strategic Visioning project, La Placa Cohen. It is our hope that, through individual interviews, group sessions with existing groups as well as cross-institutional groups, town halls, surveys, and direct e-mail and phone contact, everyone who wants to participate in the Strategic Visioning project will get an opportunity to do so, in a manner of their choosing.

Said another way: if you want to participate and be interviewed, and you make that desire known to visioning@calarts.edu, you will get that opportunity.

The Steering Committee will also work with Elizabeth Pezza from Culture Projects on the logistics of this complex project. We recognize that this effort is in addition to all of our daily work at the Institute as students, employees, or volunteers, and Elizabeth will assist us to stay on track with the process through this academic year, and into the next.

Because 2021 marks our 50^th anniversary, and Chouinard’s 100^th, the results of this project will feed our work in celebrating this milestone with a comprehensive capital campaign, a master facility plan, and a strategic framework that can guide our work for the next 50 years.

Many of us will have the opportunity to return to campus when we celebrate our 75^th anniversary and, especially for our students, our 100^thin 2071 – the hope is that upon returning, we will get to see the dreams we formed about our future though this process having become a reality.

As I said during the inauguration one year ago, this is not my vision for CalArts, but our vision. We must build it together, base it on the strength of our past, and push it boldly into the future.

I am looking forward to collaborating with the entire CalArts family on this project, and I am excited about our possibilities. If you have any questions, or comments, please email president@calarts.edu.

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