April 24, 2008
Albuquerque Journal
CSF Considering School Merger
By Polly Summar, Journal Staff WriterThe Savannah College of Art and Design has been on Stuart Kirk's radar screen for several months.
When Kirk, president of the College of Santa Fe, announced in January that the college would not have to file for financial exigency— the higher education version of Chapter 11 bankruptcy— he mentioned SCAD as a school that was doing very well as an arts college.
The College of Santa Fe is now discussing a possible merger with SCAD, and that idea has come as a surprise to many, Kirk admitted.
"I met with all the faculty on Friday," Kirk said. With "anything like this, anyone is concerned until the details are known, whether it's businesses that are merging or colleges that are merging or the guy your daughter is going to marry."
But Kirk said those questions by faculty members are ones the college can't answer yet.
"They want to know, 'What will it look like?' and 'When will it happen?' '' he said.
Describing the discussions as only preliminary, Kirk said there was no timetable for a merger.
"This is the start of us looking more seriously at each other," he said.
Kirk was optimistic about what SCAD could bring to the College of Santa Fe.
"Savannah has financial strength," he said, describing a school of 9,000 students compared to the College of Santa Fe's some 550 full-time students and 1,200 evening and weekend students.
"They have cutting-edge programs that we feel CSF needs to have," Kirk said. "The digital area is becoming very important, so that's probably the biggest example."
Applications to SCAD have increased by 22 percent this year, and the school was able to accept only 50 percent of the students who applied, signifying a strong, growing school, Kirk said.
SCAD also has campuses in Atlanta and Lacoste, France, giving the College of Santa Fe the possibilities for both faculty and student exchanges.
"And when they develop a new campus, they want to have that campus have individuality," said Kirk, a plus for the College of Santa Fe to maintain its own strengths.
Kirk said SCAD sees many of the College of Santa Fe's programs as being beneficial to it, too, including creative writing, liberal arts and music.
While some faculty members have expressed concern over a large-scale firing of professors at SCAD in 1992, Kirk said it was difficult to re-create something that long ago, calling it an "unfortunate" incident.
"But we have sent board members and a faculty member to talk with them, to their faculty members, to their students, to spend several hours with their institutional assessment group that keeps track of graduation rates and other indications of success," Kirk said.
"And we have come away believing it is an organization doing a very good job," Kirk said.