An exterior shot of one of the buildings on the SAIC campus.

Strategic Plan

Teal text that says SAIC Forward A Strategic Plan for 2026-29

 

For more than 160 years, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) has been at the vanguard of art and design education. We’ve defined new fields, embraced emerging technologies, and developed new approaches to educating students in creative disciplines. We’ve built a legacy as one of the world’s best art and design colleges. Key to our enduring success is our ability to continually evolve in response to emerging social and artistic conditions. The time for our next evolution is now.

Our students today face a constellation of challenges: diminished federal aid for domestic students; more vetting of visa applications for international students; an unstable labor market; and growing perception that the return on a degree is not worth the cost. At the same time, the pool of domestic high school graduates is in steep decline. These long-term challenges have already resulted in a smaller student body.

SAIC Forward, our three-year strategic plan, outlines the next phase of the School’s evolution. It directly confronts our challenges and builds on our legacy. Central to its design is a series of initiatives that enhance the curriculum and improve operational functions to better support our academic vision. SAIC Forward puts student outcomes front and center, focusing on recruiting talented students, creating clear career pathways, and enhancing support for our artists and designers—from orientation through graduation and beyond.

An exterior shot of the Sharp Building on the SAIC campus in downtown Chicago.

Imperatives of SAIC Forward

Five key imperatives drive SAIC’s strategic plan. They are the action-oriented categories that align a series of specific strategies we will pursue, and they are the measure by which we will structure periodic evaluations of our progress. The first three imperatives are academic in nature, requiring faculty collaboration in shaping SAIC’s academic future. The final two are operational, highlighting how staff will optimize our School in support of its renewed academic vision. Learn more below.

Academic Imperatives

Three academic imperatives address the student experience: curricular enhancements, career preparation, and increased coordination of student support.

  • With coursework anchored in open inquiry, critical thinking, and a plurality of perspectives, we will strengthen our interdisciplinary curriculum with clear pathways for creative exploration, skills development, and long-term career preparedness:

    Strategies

    1. Center our commitment to students by redefining SAIC’s mission, vision, and core values.
    2. Tie our interdisciplinary education to student outcomes:
      1. Define a clear vision for every degree program, aligned with learning goals and outcomes, competencies, and institutional assessment.
      2. Create transcript-recorded concentrations within academic departments with required courses for students who want to attain competency in a particular field.
      3. Deploy faculty-driven assessment tools to strengthen our academic programs by ensuring curricular revisions are rooted in qualitative and quantitative data.
      4. Establish clear, scaffolded curricular routes and provide needed advising so students can achieve their academic and career goals.
    3. Prepare students to navigate complex issues, sharpen critical thinking, and collaborate effectively by cultivating a classroom rich in a plurality of perspectives.
      1. Encourage intellectual openness in the classroom by creating guidance for discussions and critique.
      2. Promote critical thinking and analytic skills to cultivate rigorous scholarly inquiry and argumentation.

  • By embedding core business competencies, experiential learning, and networking opportunities into our educational offerings, we equip our graduates with the tools, relationships, and confidence required to thrive in any career.

    Strategies

    1. Strengthen students’ business competencies with scaffolded “business of art” courses, providing discipline-specific skills such as entrepreneurship, financial literacy, and legal basics.
    2. Integrate experiential learning—industry-partnered courses, real-world collaborations, and professional critiques—with curricular offerings and deepen industry partnerships with on- and off-campus student engagement opportunities to support students’ transition into professional practice.
    3. Leverage faculty expertise to build a repository of shared, adaptable teaching materials that integrate core career competencies and preserve pedagogical flexibility.
    4. Use data to inform our approach to career readiness and ensure we meet federal standards:
      1. Track long-term, post-graduation outcomes and lifetime earnings against national averages; use the data to demonstrate the tangible results of an SAIC education.
      2. Track and promote international career placements; use the data to help further align our curriculum with global professional standards.

  • Delivering well-coordinated, targeted services and resources ensures every student receives needed support (academic, health, and career), persists to graduation, and leaves fully prepared to launch a meaningful career.

    Strategies

    1. Realign student support services, offered by student affairs and academic affairs, into a coordinated network with centralized intake and a shared case management system to deliver seamless, wraparound support.
    2. Establish and promote a centralized resource guide to make it easier for students to connect to campus professional practice resources, maximizing engagement with CAPX programming and Career Launch Academy.
       

Operational Imperatives

Two operational imperatives will enhance the long-term health of the college and well-being of SAIC colleagues.

  • Investing in staff and faculty at SAIC through professional development and community programming both improves services and enhances belonging.

    Strategies

    1. Support staff and faculty with opportunities for professional learning and development, including through mentorship, so they can grow in their careers and better support the academic, operational, and financial needs of the School.
    2. Build community among students and colleagues by enhancing interdepartmental exchange and formalizing campus traditions and milestone experiences.
    3. Promote respect and open-mindedness toward a plurality of viewpoints in routine operations, including employee onboarding and relevant policies and guidelines.

  • Continually improving core aspects of our operation, such as recruitment, marketing, workforce development, physical plant, and data management, enables us to create a sustainable future for the School.

    Strategies

    1. Recruit for and maintain enrollment levels that support a sustainable curricular structure, while ensuring the financial viability of SAIC through prudent financial management:
      1. Refine our approach to providing merit and need-based financial aid to ensure students with the greatest need and academic potential have enhanced support.
      2. Accelerate consistent, year-over-year endowment growth for scholarships in advance of an upcoming capital campaign feasibility study.
      3. Maintain a balanced budget through our enrollment challenges, ensuring spending goes toward institutional priorities, including student needs.
    2. Promote the value of an SAIC education to all stakeholders:
      1. Articulate Chicago's critical role in the value of an SAIC education for prospective students and external partners (e.g., employer and internship sites), explicitly linking our urban location to student career readiness, opportunities for integrative partnerships with SAIC, and our contribution to the local economy.
      2. Articulate the distinct value of an SAIC education through communications to families, prospective students, and other stakeholders that reinforces the critical role of art and design in the economy.
    3. Make strategic improvements to campus facilities to enhance operational effectiveness, support instructional resources, and create space for priority academic areas. 
    4. Establish a centralized institutional research office and deploy an approach to analytics that—to the extent possible—unifies disparate data systems and creates a standardized approach to data.

Timeline

    Academic Year 2026–27

    By the end of the first semester of implementation, we must complete our first strategy by articulating an academic vision. The academic deans, full-time faculty, and Faculty Senate will begin this work in earnest in late August. Planning for all other strategies will begin. All action steps should be determined by the end of the spring 2027 semester. Updates on the strategic plan implementation will be distributed through periodic written reports and presentations at regular business meetings. Processes and standards for evaluating each strategy for effectiveness and sustainability will be determined alongside implementation.

    Exterior shot of the SAIC 280 Building.

    Academic Year 2027–28

    The second year of implementation will see the commencement of all strategies whose implementation has not already begun.

    Interior shot of the SAIC MacLean Center lobby.

    Academic Year 2028–29

    All action plans should be underway. By the end of the spring 2029 semester, all plans will have been fully enacted. Strategies will be evaluated for effectiveness and sustainability.

    A large group of students standing outside of the Art Institute of Chicago.

    Our Process

    SAIC Forward reflects the collective voice of our community, having been developed during the 2025–26 academic year by more than 50 faculty and staff members working across six strategic planning groups, many of whom deepened their work through listening sessions and surveys that brought in perspectives from across the School. Four groups focused specifically on our most urgent issues, developing concrete recommendations to address them, which were shared with colleagues at an in-person convening and distributed for broader review in April 2026.

    More than 130 faculty and staff members weighed in on the working groups’ 50 recommendations, and their feedback was strongly aligned around a shared priority: Initiatives that support students in completing their degrees and building meaningful lives and careers after SAIC. The Steering Committee synthesized input alongside the resource analysis provided by the Aligning Spending to Institutional Priorities working group, and incorporated additional institutional priorities—including a modernization of student recruitment, the recommendations of the Tolerance Committee, and community reflections shared during the Office of Campus Enrichment and Community Engagement’s Crafting Our Way Forward listening sessions—that strengthen and extend this plan’s reach. The Office of the President finalized the plan during the summer of 2026 with consultation from the members of the president's cabinet and the Strategic Plan Steering Committee.

    Working Groups

    Working groups were formed over the summer of 2025. Membership is drawn from nominations received from the Faculty Senate, president, dean of faculty, and vice presidents. These groups include the following:

    Students of varying ethnicities and genders gather outdoors on SAIC's campus.

    Retention and Graduation Rates

    This working group made recommendations for how we can improve our students’ retention and graduation rates.

    A group of six recent graduates, varying in ethnicity and gender, posing for photos while holding degrees and flowers.

    Post-Graduate Outcomes

    This working group made recommendations for how we can improve our graduates’ job prospects and salaries.

    Reducing Barriers to Work

    This working group made recommendations for how we can reduce structural or cultural hurdles at SAIC that slow or stymie our work.

    Interior shot of a painting studio with students.

    Aligning Spending with Institutional Priorities

    This working group assessed the degree to which our current funding allocations support our highest institutional priorities.

    Interior shot of students gathered around the lounge outside CAPX offices.

    Community Priorities

    This working group was designed to provide a forum for faculty and staff to surface strategic priorities that were not covered by the other four working groups.

    Exterior shot of the SAIC Sharp Building.

    Steering Committee

    In addition, a steering committee was formed to assess, rank, and recommend initiatives for implementation. 

    Working Group Committee Members

      • Elena Ailes (MFA 2015), non-tenure-track faculty senator and associate professor, contemporary practices
      • Craig Downs (BFA 1995), associate dean of student success
      • Melanie Emerson, dean of the library and special collections
      • Rob Flot, vice president and dean of student affairs
      • Dawn Gavin, dean of undergraduate studies and professor, contemporary practices
      • Eve Gordon (BFA 2021), student success and completion specialist
      • Mark Jeffery, professor, performance
      • Cameron Martin, F. H. Sellers Professor, painting and drawing
      • Asia Mitchell, executive director of admissions
      • Amelia Noël-Elkins, associate provost for academic planning and curricular analysis

      • Giovanni Aloi, professor, adjunct, art history, theory, and criticism
      • Debbie Beal, director of academic advising
      • Rebekah Champ, dean of academic advising and CAPX
      • Delinda Collier, dean of graduate studies and professor, art history, theory, and criticism
      • Michael Golec, full-time faculty representative-at-large and associate professor, art history, theory, and criticism
      • Alan Kwan, assistant professor, film, video, new media, and animation
      • Amelia Noël-Elkins, associate provost for academic planning and curricular analysis
      • Aliza Shvarts, director, low-residency MFA, and assistant professor, performance
      • Jim TerMeer, chair and professor, designed objects
      • Emilie Yardley-Hodges (BFAW 2015), executive assistant to the provost and dean of faculty
      • Staci Zake, director, academic program review and assessment

      • Holly Dankert, head of research and access services, Flaxman Library
      • Isabel Garcia-Gonzales, associate director of faculty employment resources
      • Sarah Hicks (BFA 1999), executive director of facilities services
      • Rebecca Keller, professor, adjunct, sculpture, art education, and art history, theory, and criticism
      • Arnold J. Kemp, professor, painting and drawing
      • Lizzie Leopold, assistant professor, arts administration and policy
      • Adam Mack, associate professor, liberal arts
      • Amee Spondike, vice president for advancement
      • Gretchen Talbot, dean of administrative budget and planning
      • Bree Witt, vice president of marketing and communications

      • Martin Berger, provost and senior vice president of academic affairs
      • Tom Buechele (BFA 1990, MFA 2017), vice president for campus operations
      • Cathy Carlson, vice president for financial planning and analysis
      • Alex Holt, executive vice president for finance and administration
      • Jenny Lee, chair of faculty senate and associate professor, art history, theory, and criticism
      • Oliver Shao, associate professor, liberal arts, and co-chair of fiscal affairs committee
      • Jina Valentine, chair and professor, department of printmedia and co-chair of fiscal affairs committee

      • Anita Bhardwaj, director, undergraduate international admissions
      • Eddie Chambers, Goldabelle McComb Finn Distinguished Professor, art history, theory, and criticism
      • Kira Dominguez Hultgren, assistant professor, fiber and material studies
      • Hope Esser (MFA 2012), non-tenure-track faculty representative-at-large and professor, adjunct, contemporary practices
      • Christine Grodecki, director of donor relations, advancement communications and events
      • Shaurya Kumar, chair of faculty and professor, printmedia
      • Eric Lebofsky (MFA 2004), executive director of academic administration
      • T. Camille Martin-Thomsen, dean of faculty and vice president of academic affairs and professor, architecture and interior architecture
      • Sekile Nzinga, vice president of campus enrichment and community engagement
      • Michael Shields, executive director of student financial services

      • Martin Berger, provost and senior vice president of academic affairs
      • Cathy Carlson, vice president of financial analysis and planning
      • Rob Flot, vice president and dean of student affairs
      • Alex Holt, executive vice president for finance and administration
      • Jenny Lee, chair of faculty senate and professor, art history, theory, and criticism
      • Jiseon Lee Isbara, president
      • T. Camille Martin-Thomsen, dean of faculty and vice president of academic affairs and professor, architecture and interior architecture
      • Amee Spondike, vice president for advancement